


No Murder, No Gold, Just Vibes

by fructose



Category: Outer Banks (TV)
Genre: Canon Divergence, Daddy Issues, Dom/sub Undertones, Drug Use, Enemies to Lovers, Fluff, Homophobic Language, Hurt/Comfort, Just Vibes, M/M, No murder, Rough Sex, Smut, a cabin in the woods, aggressive consent, happy boys, mentions of abuse, no gold, the country club
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-15
Updated: 2021-01-29
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:01:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 22,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27567157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fructose/pseuds/fructose
Summary: Dumb Kook with daddy issues propositions dumb Pogue with daddy issues. They seek to solve their issues via the power of roughhousing.“That’s pretty gay, Rafe,” JJ said softly, leaning away to slump back into the sand.“You’ve literally sucked my dick, dude,” Rafe replied.JJ grinned. “Touche.”
Relationships: Rafe Cameron/JJ
Comments: 80
Kudos: 165





	1. Chapter 1

So what if Rafe looked at JJ Maybank sometimes? He was always running around with his shirt off, hanging out of trees on The Cut, spilling beer over himself, being a jackass.

Topper noticed, of course he did, the fucker noticed everything.

“Like what you see?” he’d say, watching Rafe watch JJ. But Rafe would just shrug, because whatever. They’d all looked at Kiara at some point, just because they were Pogues didn’t mean you couldn’t look once in a while. And why was Kiara the only one who could be objectified?

So yeah, if they had found their way to a kegger and JJ Maybank was shirtless and sweating, challenging someone to a push up contest in the sand, Rafe would sit and watch.

Plus, they had history. Rafe had broken JJ’s nose one time, JJ had slashed his tires in return. Rafe had started a fight with John B and JJ had hit Rafe over the back of the head with a beer bottle. Rafe tried to get JJ arrested, so JJ pushed his Ducati off a pier. They had a long and rich history, one which kept them orbiting one another. A constant cycle of paybacks which kept Rafe close to JJ and JJ close to Rafe.

They had never been friends, but before the fighting started Rafe had been close with Kiara for a while, and she had confided in him about her new Pogue friends. Rafe knew JJ had trouble with his father, the same old shit you’d see all over The Cut, alcoholism, absenteeism, abuse. Whatever it was, it kept JJ angry, a mad dog who was easy to rile. JJ was always spoiling for a fight, and luckily Rafe was too.

After his father kicked him out Rafe floated from place to place for a few months, until his father finally took pity on him and gave him the keys to one of Rose’s properties, saying he could stay there for as long as it wasn’t selling. Rafe hated the place, an apartment on the second story of a block near the very edge of Figure 8. A single space for the kitchen and the living room, a bathroom, a bedroom. It wasn’t so much the place that he hated, it was the look on his father’s face when he handed over the keys; the disappointment, the shame.

So yeah, Rafe was pretty much angry all the time, and JJ was his favourite target.

They would run into one another more often than perhaps JJ might have liked, at gigs down at The Hollow, at the grocery store in town, at parties, events John B was working for Rafe’s father. Rafe could never resist making a comment, reaching out and prodding, poking, flicking, pinching. Sometimes he could get a rise out of JJ and they’d have a scuffle, but mostly John B and Pope were there to calm him down, bundle him away to somewhere Rafe couldn’t taunt him.

He tried to think back to when it started, when he first noticed JJ, but by the time Rafe hit his twenty-first birthday their feud had been years in the making, it might as well have been going on forever. They weren’t friends, there was no doubt about that, but they were a part of each other’s lives, their back and forth a part of what made Rafe who he was.

That year Rafe decided to bundle his birthday celebrations in with a New Years’ Eve Eve party happening down on The Cut, a beach kegger where people bundled up in jackets but wore shorts and sandals like it was still summer. Of course the Pogues were there, it wasn’t strictly Rafe’s birthday party and there was nothing he could do to keep them from their own beaches, so the Kooks settled into an uneasy truce for the night.

Rafe had been drinking for most of the day and had done a few lines of coke after dinner to keep him going through the evening. He’d been playing drinking games with Topper and Kelce for about a half hour when he spotted JJ wading through the sand, off to take a piss among the twisted oaks that grew straight out of the grassy dunes that lined the high edge of the beach. Rafe wanted him, wanted something from him, he wasn’t sure what, but he knew he wanted to follow him up there.

“I gotta take a leak, boys,” Rafe said, stretching out his back and grabbing his Big Gulp from where he had twisted it into the sand. He saw Topper’s eye scan the edge of the beach, but it was dark and he was sure JJ was already hidden. “Hold that thought, yeah?”

He trudged up into the dunes and found JJ wedged between two long, low boughs of an oak, facing the pitch black of The Cut beyond the party.

“How’s it going, beautiful?” Rafe said, smiling smugly over the lip of his Big Gulp when JJ jumped.

JJ turned his head, still pissing into the sand, and rolled his eyes. “Jesus, Cameron, can you give me a damn break to take a piss?”

“It’s the only time I can get you without your entourage,” Rafe said, watching the backs of JJ’s bare arms as he zipped up and turned around.

“What do you want?” JJ said, almost tired. “I can’t be bothered with your shit tonight.”

Rafe stared, he didn’t know what he wanted. He was too wasted to start a fight, but had followed JJ out here like a weirdo, so he felt like maybe he should start one just for the sake of it. He swallowed, took a sip of his beer, and kept staring.

“You know it’s my birthday?” Rafe said eventually, not really sure what reaction he was hoping for.

JJ looked around, obviously expecting an attack from somewhere. “Well this ain’t your party.”

“You’re not gonna wish me a happy birthday?” Rafe said, pushing his hand into his hair and swiping it back off of his face, trying to focus on the shape of JJ in the darkness.

JJ huffed, annoyed or amused, Rafe couldn’t tell. “Happy birthday, what are you like forty now? Shouldn’t you be over in Figure 8 getting a job or something rather than getting high with a bunch of highschool kids?”

Rafe grinned, JJ wanted to start something and his skin itched to let him. But he was too drunk and too high so instead he said, “That’s real kind of you, Maybank, but you’re way out of highschool.”

“We ain’t getting high together,” JJ said, stepping away.

Through the fog of his thoughts Rafe thought, _Why not?_ and he dug into his pocket for his baggie of coke, or what was left of it, held it up and said, “We could if you want.”

JJ stared at Rafe, the sudden pop of a stray firework illuminating his confused face for a moment. “Ok, whatever you’re up to, I’m not interested tonight ok? We ain’t...“ JJ paused and held up his hands. “I’m gonna… go back to the party.”

Rafe shrugged. “Your loss, Maybank.”

JJ shook his head and turned to leave, his dumb boots heavy in the sand as he trudged away. JJ turned once to check he wasn’t being followed but Rafe just stood up on the dunes and watched him leave.

_What the fuck, Rafe? What the fuck was that?_

Later Rafe found himself so enraged by his own stupidity he crashed his shoulder into some poor kid, spilling his own beer down his front. _You wanna watch where you’re fucking going_ , he had said low and dangerous, before splitting the kid’s lip. He was pulling back for a second hit when he felt arms around him, pulling him away.

He turned around and saw John B, of all people, yanking his arm back. Rafe shook him off and stumbled away, catching sight of JJ stepping forward to help the kid with the split lip, tugging his bandana out of his pocket and holding it up to the kid’s face. Rafe grumbled at Topper as he passed him, heading for the road beyond the oaks. He was done with the party, done with his birthday, done with making a fucking fool of himself.

When he finally got back to his apartment he slumped on the bed, still covered in beer, his knuckles throbbing and bloodied. He was hard, but it was just the alcohol, the adrenalin of having someone else’s blood on him. He angrily ground his hips into the mattress until it hurt, wishing it was JJ he had hit, then fell asleep in a rage.

On New Years’ Day he went to his father’s house to toast their health and drink whiskey in the drawing room. It was a tradition. Sarah knew about the fight at the New Years’ Eve Eve party but didn’t push him about him, looked at his red eyes and clearly decided, for once, to leave it.

“So!” Rose said happily that evening, standing near the fireplace with a glass of champagne, sweeping her golden gown around her feet. “New Years’ resolutions, who wants to go first?” She paused and smiled, her cruel eyes landing on Rafe, who instinctively slouched back into the shining leather of the sofa. “Care to take the lead, Rafe?”

“Not really,” Rafe grumbled.

“Rafe,” his father said warningly.

Rafe shrugged. “I don’t know, what is there?”

Rose almost laughed, as though there were a million things Rafe should be doing better. 

Rafe glared at her. “Aright, my resolution is to work out every day,” he said, raising his glass.

“Excellent-”

“I will also get a job,” Rafe said, knowing exactly what they wanted to hear. He downed the rest of his glass of whiskey and banged the glass down on the table. “I’m also gonna cut down on drinking. You know what else? I’m gonna buy my own place.”

“Ok, Rafe, we get it,” his father said.

“I’m also gonna work on my anger management,” Rafe said, heaving himself up from the sofa, avoiding Sarah’s worried gaze to instead glare back at Rose. “And I’m gonna get off the drugs. How’s that?”

“Rafe!” He turned to see his father standing, his eyes furious. “Can you let us have one holiday without ruining it?”

Rafe looked down at the empty glass of whiskey then back up at his father. “Apparently not, dad. I resolve to be a better son in the future, how about that?”

“That’s a novel idea,” Rose said into her champagne glass, eyes slanting away. 

Rafe clenched his jaw. He saw Sarah frowning angrily up at Rose from her seat near the fireplace, and he felt for a split second like maybe she thought Rose was out of line too.

“I think you should leave,” his father said, reaching out to touch Rafe’s shoulder.

“Of course,” he said as he jerked away, out of his father’s reach. He grabbed his sweater from the edge of the sofa and turned to catch Sarah’s eye, nodding and saying as steady as he could manage, “Well, Happy New Year, y’all. I guess I’ll see you around, huh?”

His father reached for him again but he was already turning and walking away, grabbing his bag from the foot of the spiral stairs and storming out of the house, slamming the glass door behind him.

He drove straight home, in the truck his father’s money had bought, drank half a bottle of vodka and punched a hole straight through the door of one of his cheap chipboard kitchen cabinets. 

Afterwards he sat on the couch and looked at his bruised knuckles, still not healed from where he hit the kid at the beach. The fresh blood was already black and when he made a tight fist the skin split and beads of red blood bubbled up through the cracks.

The next time he saw JJ it was at the general store about a week after New Years’. When JJ rounded the corner at the end of the aisle and saw Rafe he sighed, looking away towards the shelves, which were already hung with hearts for Valentine’s.

JJ obviously hadn’t fared much better than Rafe over the holiday as he had a new bruise on his jaw, blooming purple under his ear. Rafe wondered who else had JJ in their sights. It made him feel better, somehow, knowing that JJ was suffering too, the familiarity of Rafe’s pain echoed in JJ, a mirror of himself, the same but different.

“Always taking a beating, Maybank,” Rafe said quietly. “Every time I see you you’re a damn mess.”

JJ ignored him, jaw working with the effort to keep in whatever he wanted to say in response.

“Have a good New Years’?” Rafe said, almost taunting.

“Yeah, fantastic, we hit up the country club, drank mimosas til midnight,” JJ said, rolling his eyes. “Then I fucked a debutant in the bathroom.”

“Good luck with that, Maybank, everyone on the island knows you’re a faggot.”

JJ’s head snapped up. “What’d you say?”

Rafe stepped closer, close enough that he could reach out if he wanted to, fist a hand in JJ’s shitty t-shirt and pull him closer. “You heard me.”

“Get fucked,” JJ spat.

“I knew it as soon as I saw you, always looking for an excuse to start a fight and get your hands on me,” Rafe said, looking pointedly at the bruise under JJ’s ear. “Some big guy gave it to you good this holiday, huh?”

JJ glared up at Rafe, furious. “This coming from the closeted dickhead who likes to spy on me taking a piss?”

Rafe grinned, leaning forward into JJ’s space. “Takes one to know one, Maybank.”

They didn’t run into each other again for a long time after that. Rafe knew JJ had started working as a gardener for a family a few blocks over from his father’s place so he assumed he was just too busy to get fucked up. JJ hadn’t appeared at any of the usual parties for months, but Rafe had never had a job so he had no idea if that was just normal for people who had to work or if JJ was doing a very good job of avoiding him.

It wasn’t until late April that he saw JJ again. The summer heat was already setting in, making their shirts stick to their shoulders and their hair hang in clumps in their sweaty faces. He and Topper were at his father’s house, eating pizza on loungers by the pool, watching John B trudge back and forth between the house and his father’s boat, carrying supplies for a fishing trip the following day. Rafe thought about hurling some abuse at him but it was just too damn hot too damn early in the year, so instead he pulled off his rank shirt and jumped in the pool, splashing Topper’s half eaten pizza.

“Hey, man!” Topper shook his head, huffing and settling back down on the lounger

Rafe swam a few lengths before propping himself up on the side of the pool, reaching out for his own forgotten pizza box when he saw, with a thrill, that JJ was out on the pier,  _ his father’s pier _ , talking to John B. He was leant against one of the wooden support posts, arms crossed over his chest, shoulders bare, smiling about something.

“It’s your boyfriend,” Topper said around a mouthful of pizza. “Looking awful pretty today.”

Rafe ignored him and hauled himself out of the pool, wet feet slapping on the tiles. He heard Topper scrabbling to his feet behind him, but wasn’t worried about back up, this was  _ his _ house after all.

“Hey!” he shouted, marching across the yard. “You’re trespassing, Maybank, you wanna get the fuck off my pier.”

JJ spun around, fists clenched. “Pretty sure it’s not  _ your _ pier,” JJ said with a sneer.

Rafe smiled, stalked right up to JJ and grabbed him by the front of his t-shirt, pulling him forward.

“Hey, man, it’s alright, he’s just leaving,” John B said quickly, stepping forward and putting a hand on Rafe’s shoulder.

“You wanna get your ass off this pier and off my father’s property, or it’ll be back to the cells for you, Maybank,” Rafe smiled. “And what would daddy have to say about that?”

JJ pushed at Rafe’s bare chest, his face furious, while John B tried to jump in the middle of the two of them. Rafe heard Topper’s voice from somewhere in the background as they tumbled together. JJ got a fist up and tried to make a swing for Rafe but he dodged, shoving him hard in the middle of his chest. JJ stumbled backwards towards the edge of the pier, reaching out and grabbing Rafe’s arm to steady himself, pulling them flush together for a moment.

Rafe wasn’t ashamed of the fact that he was half hard, it was whatever, it happened when he got into fights, but he saw the realisation on JJ’s face as they pressed together in that moment, knew that JJ felt it. It sent a shock of adrenaline through him that almost had him growling. He felt rabid, but then John B managed to get in between them, pushing them apart and crowding JJ back towards the end of the pier, whispering something to him, calming him.

Rafe felt giddy, ecstatic, he smiled wide and shouted again, “Get the fuck off my pier, Maybank!”

John B hounded JJ around them, pushing at him as they passed Rafe and Topper on the pier, back across yard and towards the house, whispering the whole time. “Don’t worry,” Rafe heard. “It’s ok.”

Topper was chuckling at his side, shaking his head. “You’re crazy, Rafe.”

“Don’t let me catch you around here again, dipshit!” he called, then he whooped for good measure. As Topper turned away to walk back to the pool Rafe pressed the heel of his palm against his cock and felt it twitch under his hand. Maybe this  _ was _ different to looking at Kiara, maybe this really was something else.

He watched until John B and JJ disappeared around the side of the house and slunk back to the pool, where Topper was finishing the last slice of his pizza.

“You’re weird with him,” Topper said finally, settling back on the lounger and closing his eyes.

“I don’t like him. I don’t want him round here,” Rafe replied.

Topper made a noise that Rafe couldn’t decipher. “You always find an excuse to get on him, Sarah says so too.”

“Pfft, fuck Sarah,” Rafe said, instinctively looking up at Sarah’s window. What the fuck was it to do with her anyway?

“I’m trying,” Topper said with a grin. Rafe threw a slice of pizza at him.

That night Rafe stood under a cold shower while he jerked off. He had always resolutely  _ not _ thought about JJ when he did this, but now he let himself  _ imagine _ . It was like learning how to do it all over again. He thought about JJ’s shocked face, something like realisation in his eyes, how it had felt to press his cock against JJ’s hard hip. He imagined pulling JJ forward and kissing him til JJ was gasping, til he was rubbing up against him. He wondered what sounds he would make, how Rafe’s name would sound in his mouth. He came too quick, pressing his forehead to the tiled wall of the shower and letting the cold water run over him.

He wondered who had hit him over New Years’ and felt oddly jealous. Not jealous that someone else had got into a fight with him, but jealous that someone else had put their hands on JJ, left their mark on him. If anyone was gonna push JJ around it should be Rafe, afterall, they had  _ history _ .


	2. Chapter 2

In mid May Rafe found out that Sarah was dating John B. She and Topper had already broken up but whether or not there was an overlap they didn’t know. The country club was ecstatic with the news that one of their own was dating some scruffy orphan from The Cut, and Rafe heard whispers of the scandal wherever he went on Figure 8. He didn’t particularly give a shit, but he was happy that for once it was Sarah making trouble for the family instead of himself.

Topper had come to him and cried the night they broke up, but when he found out Sarah was dating John B he was furious, convinced Sarah had cheated on him with some piece of shit Pogue. It didn’t particularly feel to Rafe like Topper  _ loved _ Sarah, whatever that meant, but it definitely felt like Topper owned her, and he was livid that someone had taken his stuff.

“Listen, Top, let’s just head over to The Cut and pay him a visit,” Rafe had said, his arm slung over Topper’s shoulder. “We’ll sit and have a conversation with him and clear this all up.”

Topper frowned, knowing exactly what Rafe really meant. He seemed to be turning this over in his mind and then he said, “Do you think she fucked him?”

Rafe shrugged. “Probably, man, I mean, the guys at the country club say she’s easy.”

Topper shook his head. “She’s a virgin, Rafe, she never even slept with me.”

Rafe laughed, but he didn’t think it was funny, it just felt like the right response. He had just assumed his sister was out sleeping with whoever, he’d never considered that she might still be a virgin, that maybe the assholes at the country club were just gossips and liars. He thought for a moment about New Years’ and how Sarah had glared up at Rose on his behalf, how she had avoided bringing up the fight on the beach in front of their father.

Rafe shook his head, that was all too much to think about, he had to concentrate. Rafe had been looking for an excuse for weeks to get over to The Cut after seeing JJ at his father’s place. This was his best chance at a legitimate reason to go looking for him, so he couldn’t spend time worrying about his sister.

The night after their little altercation on the pier he had gone drinking with Kelce and Topper at The Hollow and they had laughed about it, teasing Rafe about JJ having a boner for him.

“You know he’s gay right?” Kelce had said. “Everyone knows it.”

“He has to get with the fishermen that come from the mainland cus there are no other fags on the island,” Topper laughed, taking a swig of his beer.

Rafe laughed along with them, saying, “Yeah right, he probably loved me getting up on him.”

“Big guy like you?” Kelce looked Rafe up and down and made a kissy face. “He’ll be jerking it for a year thinking about it.”

Rafe laughed but he felt the weight on their words fall on him like blows. He didn’t know if he himself was gay, he didn’t think he was, but he knew now without any doubt that he wanted JJ. And as far as he knew JJ truly was the only gay dude on the island, so maybe JJ did want him too. There was really only one way to know, and he had to get over to The Cut to find out.

So Rafe ignored thoughts of his sister and instead shook Topper by the shoulders and said, “None of that shit matters right now, ok, Top? What matters is we get  _ even _ .”

Topper nodded and said, “Yeah, right, ok. We should get Kelce, right? Back up?”

Rafe grinned.

They found John B with JJ and Pope at the  _ Chateau _ , so Kiara had said it was called, fishing off the bashed up pier that ran into the marshes from the backyard. It was dusk and the guys had set up strings of fat white lights that you’d find down in mines, strung between the trees, making a path down to the pier.

It was hot, close, and Rafe’s skin buzzed as Topper shouted out, “Hey John B, I need a word with you!”

JJ was on his feet in a second, marching down the pier towards Rafe, Topper and Kelce like they weren’t about to absolutely beat his ass. John B and Pope came running after him, fishing rods forgotten on the pier, bundling into JJ like they were playing football.

There was a lot of shouting, especially when Topper got his hands on John B and started dragging him back towards the pier. Kelce and Pope followed them, Pope pulling and pushing to try and free John B from Topper’s grip. JJ started after them but Rafe was on him, grabbing his arm and pulling him back.

“And where are you going, Maybank?” Rafe said, taunting. “I came all the way down here to see you and you’re gonna run off?”

Rafe laughed short and sharp, dodging JJ’s jab while reaching up to slap his face. JJ looked shocked by the slap, obviously expecting a fist, and in his moment of confusion Rafe reached up and slapped him again, JJ’s head jerking to the side. There was a loud splash from somewhere near the pier, followed by Pope’s shouts, but Rafe ignored them. He crowded in close to JJ, gripping his jaw with one hand, pulling him close with the other. He backed JJ up against one of the trees, the white lights reflecting like stars in JJ’s wide eyes. His mouth twisted and his hair fell forward into his eyes, his cap forgotten somewhere in the dirt during the scuffle.

“You like getting pushed around, JJ?” Rafe said, his tone was mocking but his words were searching. He didn’t want it to sound like a plee, but he felt, deep down, that it was.

“Fuck you,” JJ spat.

Rafe shook him a little, pressing their bodies together, feeling, as he hoped he would, that JJ was just as hard as he was. JJ struggled, trying to move away but only really succeeding in grinding his hips against Rafe’s. Rafe looked down at their bodies, where their chests were pressed flush together, and said, “Pretty sure I know what you want, JJ.”

JJ tried to pull away once more, eyes hard and searching. “Fuck you,” he said again, quieter, his hands reaching up and twisting into the fabric of Rafe’s shirt sleeves.

Rafe did not look away, he held JJ’s gaze as he said low and almost conspiratorial, “If you want it, you can come find me and I’ll give it to you, Maybank. You remember what I said before?”

_ Takes one to know one. _

Rafe could feel that JJ was pulled taut like a bow string, ready to attack or ready to bolt, but he did not try to pull away again. Instead they stayed pressed together as JJ’s eyes searched Rafe’s face for some new danger, some new hurt.

Rafe heard Kelce call his name and he smiled smugly and tapped JJ’s cheek, shoving him away and turning to Topper and Kelce, who were both soaking wet and breathing heavy. Behind them he saw John B hauling himself out of the water, Pope pulling at his arm.

As they walked away Rafe looked back at JJ and saw Pope stumble across the yard to check on him. Rafe heard Pope say hurridly, “What the fuck was that all about?” but didn’t catch what JJ said in response.

Less than a week later there was a knock at the door of Rafe’s apartment, a quick rap that made Rafe jump. He stretched out his shoulders and turned the TV off, walked barefoot to the door and peered through the peephole. He saw, to his disbelief, JJ’s profile, looking back out towards the road like he was about to bolt. He had thought maybe,  _ maybe _ , JJ might actually turn up, but he hadn’t really expected it. He knew JJ didn’t have a lot of choice on the island, not a lot of dudes looking to fuck some loser Pogue, but then he also knew that JJ hated him and wasn’t likely to put years of mutual anamosity aside just to get his dick wet. But whatever, Rafe thought. It was whatever.

He took a breath, pushed his hair out of his face and pulled open the door.

“What the fuck do you want?” Rafe said, bracing his arm against the door frame, pulling himself up to his full height.

JJ glared at him, face hard. He looked down at his feet and then back towards the road. Rafe didn’t wanna push too much, didn’t wanna risk him changing his mind, so he stepped back from the door, letting JJ bustle into his apartment. He pushed the door closed and grabbed at JJ before he could get too far, pulled him back and pushed him back against the door.

“I asked you a question, Maybank.”

JJ let himself be pushed, he didn’t fight, he just looked away, chewing the inside of his lip, blonde hair falling into his eyes.

“What are you doing at my apartment?” Rafe kept one hand fisted in JJ’s t-shirt, the other braced on the door by the side of his head. He pulled at JJ and pushed him back again, so that his head clunked against the wood. “You come to be pushed around, Maybank?”

JJ looked steadfastly away, uncharacteristically quiet. Rafe took in the taut stretch of his neck, the line of his jaw. He could smell the weed on him, could feel the heat of him. Even though Rafe only had a couple of inches on JJ he seemed smaller inside than he did outside, or maybe that was because Rafe was trying to make himself seem bigger. Whatever it was had Rafe standing over him like a monolith, JJ already breathing hard under him.

“Do you want me to push you around?” Rafe said, close and quiet.

JJ blinked slow and nodded, still refusing to look at Rafe. There was an almost healed cut over his eye, another on his cheek. A bruise faded to yellow under his chin. Rafe reached up and gripped JJ’s jaw as he had done at the Chateau, dug his thumb into the yellow bruise there and turned JJ’s head to face him. He leaned forward as though to kiss him but JJ jerked away, flighty under his hands.

Rafe shrugged because  _ whatever _ , then fisted both hands in JJ’s t-shirt and pulled him away from the door, spinning them and backing him into the edge of the couch. JJ flung out his hands to try and steady himself but Rafe pushed him back, as rough as he dared, so that JJ stumbled and fell back into the cushions. Rafe was on him in a second, grabbing at JJ’s hands, pulling them over his head and holding them tight enough to hurt.

“I knew you wanted it,” Rafe said, unable to stop himself. He thrust his hips against JJ’s, long and slow, until JJ let out a strangled little noise. “I fucking knew it.”

“Shut the fuck up,” JJ said, almost a hiss. Rafe tried to kiss him again but JJ pulled away, instead pushing his hips up to meet Rafe’s, urging him to move faster.

Rafe let one of his hands wander down, pushing up JJ’s t-shirt to reveal his flat stomach, his tanned skin. Rafe let out a heavy breath as he looked at JJ underneath him, hard and fucking… fucking beautiful.

“You gotta tell me,” Rafe said, grinding their hips together, his free hand flat on JJ’s chest under his bunched up t-shirt. “You gotta tell me you want it”

JJ struggled a bit then slumped into the sofa. He huffed and looked up at Rafe, fixing his eyes on him for the first time as he said angrily, “I’m not gonna stroke your ego, dude.”

Rafe leaned down and tucked his face into the crook of JJ’s neck, his lips against his pulse. “How am I meant to know you really want it if you don’t tell me?”

“You looking for consent?” JJ said it like it was a joke, but he flexed his hands and pulled where Rafe held his wrists tight. JJ could get away if he really wanted to, Rafe knew that, but the fact that he acted like he couldn’t made Rafe’s pulse tick rabbit-fast from his throat to his cock.

Rafe starting fucking his hips into JJ’s, their clothes painful and so fucking good all at once. He wanted to stop and take off JJ’s clothes but now that he had him he didn’t dare stop. So instead he said, “Yeah, tell me.”

JJ’s heart beat fast under Rafe’s palm, and his breathing came shallow as he fought against himself. Rafe had never been with a dude, but he knew JJ was close. He reached up with his free hand, tangled now in JJ’s t-shirt, and pressed his palm against JJ’s throat, wrapping his fingers around him until he could feel his pulse thud thud thudding under his fingertips.

Under his breath he heard JJ spit out the word, “Fuck,” and Rafe pressed harder, feeling JJ swallow under his palm as he ground their hips together. Then, “Yeah,” JJ breathed, and then quieter still, “Yeah, I want it.”

Afterwards JJ sat on the couch for a little while, his knees wide, probably as uncomfortable as Rafe was with come drying in his shorts. He didn’t say anything, just sat there until it seemed time to leave, which he did without a word.

Rafe ran a hand over his face and got up to shower. Confused and horny and ecstatic. He wanted to call someone, tell someone. He wanted to drink a beer and laugh about his conquest. But who would he tell? Who would he call? He stood in the shower and stared at his feet, the water running over him. He thought about what his father would say, imagined that disappointed look, the shake of his head.

_ Really, Rafe? The Maybank kid? _

Rafe scrubbed himself clean and thought about doing a line and staying up all night, watching shit and feeling bad, but he hadn’t done any coke since the evening Topper threw John B off the pier and it felt, for some reason, like a mistake. He wondered if JJ had been a mistake too, after all, Rafe was real good at making mistakes.

He got out of the shower and dried off, strolling naked into the living room and glancing at his bag bundled by the kitchen counter, inside of which was a baggie of coke. He stared at the bag, his jaw clenching, then let his eyes wander to the couch, where JJ had been just hours before. He thought about how JJ’s skin had felt under his palm and wondered if all of him felt like that, he thought about his grunted expletives, how quiet he had been when he came. Rafe dug the heel of his palm into his groin, just above his sore dick, shook his head and strode around the kitchen counter to grab a beer from the fridge.

He spent the evening drinking, vaguely watching the TV until he fell asleep on the couch, wondering if he should have asked JJ to stay.


	3. Chapter 3

As May seeped stickily into June Rafe found himself almost obsessively seeking JJ out. He hadn’t seen him since the day at his apartment and he felt, for some inexplicable reason, that it was important he speak to him. Though what he wanted to say he wasn’t sure.

When Rafe finally spotted JJ outside the Clayton’s place a week later he almost crashed his truck. He drove around the block three times to watch him mowing the lawn, sweating in one of his shitty vests, hair bundled up under his cap. Rafe’s own polo seemed ridiculously hot and he plucked the material away from his chest as he drove.

He parked the truck outside his father’s house and started to walk back towards the Clayton’s, trying to think of some reason why he would be walking by that way. He got half way and chickened out, turning back around to head back to his father’s.

As he did he heard a call from behind him. “So are you stalking me now?”

He turned to see JJ walking towards him, backpack slung over his shoulder, his vest dark with sweat.

“My dad literally lives here, remember?”

JJ raised an eyebrow and pointed over Rafe’s shoulder. “He lives a block and half thataway.”

Rafe raised his hands, opening his mouth and then shutting it again, before saying, “I was taking a walk.”

JJ didn’t look convinced, but grumbled, “Right. You want something from me?”

“No,” Rafe said, pushing his hair back. Then he shifted his weight nervously from one foot to the other and said, “I wanted to... talk. About the other day.”

JJ looked away, colour blooming high on his cheeks. “Well, don’t.”

Rafe nodded once, pulled at his polo again, trying to get some air between the stifling fabric and his skin. “You going to the show at The Hollow tonight?”

“What are we friends now?” JJ smiled, but Rafe could tell he was angry.

The old familiar urge to plant a fist in the middle of JJ’s face rose in Rafe’s chest, but he willed it away and shrugged. “Whatever, forget about it,” he said, turning away without another word and heading back towards his father’s. He walked without looking back, thinking of the baggie of coke he still had in his bag, which was bundled into the footwell of his truck. He just needed something to take the edge off, just a bump, that was all.

When he reached his father’s he fumbled with the keys to the truck, getting the door unlocked and reaching in through the passenger’s side door for his bag.

“Rafe,” came a voice behind him. “I didn’t know you were coming over today?”

“Oh hey, Sarah,” Rafe said, straightening up and trying to look normal. “What’s up?”

“Wheezie and I are doing our taco thing, you know, Taco Pool?” Sarah almost looked nervous. Rafe wondered if there was something going on or if maybe she just always looked like that when she spoke to him, afterall, he had been off the coke for two weeks at that point, it was probably the most sober he had been since he was sixteen. “Did you know?”

Rafe snorted. “Did I know about Taco Pool? No, I was, er, I was-” 

“You’re welcome to join,” she said, then paused before adding, “Dad and Rose are out on the boat, it’s just us.”

She was being kind, Rafe realised. She was just being kind.

“No, I can’t, I got a thing,” Rafe said gruffly. “I gotta go, ok?”

Sarah nodded. “Ok, no worries.”

They stared at each other for a moment before Rafe awkwardly got into the passenger’s side of his truck and fumbled his way across to the driver’s seat. “I gotta bounce, I’ll see you later.”

“Ok, Rafe,” Sarah said, pushing the passenger’s side door closed. “See you around.”

Rafe simply could not expend the energy analysing his sister’s behaviour, so instead he drove straight home and downed three beers, got changed into a clean polo and slipped on his best court shoes.

It was dubstep, or some such shit, at The Hollow tonight. Not that it mattered, no one went for the music, it was the only place to get fucked up indoors that wasn’t strictly owned by Figure 8 or The Cut. It was the only place where the security was rough enough, old school enough, to actually keep the fighting to a minimum, where you could have a night out and not worry about the old feuds getting in the way.

Topper and Kelce met him at the door, where a group of kids stood smoking and laughing.

“How’s it going?” Topper asked as they bumped fists. “You selling tonight?”

Rafe shook his head. “Nah, man, Barry’s all out, some trouble he’s having, I don’t know.” It was a lie, he hadn’t been to see Barry in a month, but Topper didn’t need to know. If he wanted something he could find someone else. “Any trouble inside?” Rafe asked as they headed in through the door to the booming darkness within.

“Nothing,” Topper shouted. “But Pope and JJ are here, Kiara too.”

They stepped into the main room and headed straight for the heaving bar. There was a guy with a couple of decks up on the stage and the room was packed, it stank of weed and sweat, the sharp tang of alcohol in the air.

“I’m gonna see if I can find some gear,” Rafe shouted, lying again. Topper just nodded and pushed Kelce towards the bar as Rafe took off through the crowd towards the stage.

It didn’t take him long to find JJ and thankfully Kiara and Pope were nowhere to be seen. JJ was leaning back against one of the speakers next to the stage, shouting into the ear of some poor girl who looked as though she was valiantly trying to hear what he was saying.

As Rafe neared them he heard JJ’s voice, practically screaming over the booming bass of the music, “So it’s actually part of the turtle! Like, you can’t take it off!”

The girl nodded, her face flushed with confusion. 

“People used to try, but it’s like  _ meat _ in there!” JJ nodded enthusiastically when the girl turned to look at him, obviously thinking she couldn't believe what he had just told her as opposed to having no idea what he was talking about.

Rafe got close enough to lean back against the speaker next to JJ, nodding and smiling at the girl who took her chance to escape. JJ turned, his face dropping when he realised who was standing next to him. His expression was indeterminable, something like resignation, something like displeasure, something like anticipation. Rafe didn’t know but he didn’t dare push, knowing JJ was a jumpy motherfucker and was as likely to throw a punch as much as he was likely to let Rafe get his hands on him. So he said nothing, just looked at JJ for a moment before reaching out for JJ’s glass, plucking it from his hand and downing what was left in it, throat working as he swallowed. He watched JJ watching him, feeling buzzed and too warm, praying silently that Pope and Kiara didn’t appear.

“Looks like you finished your drink,” Rafe shouted. 

JJ nodded, eyes fixed on Rafe’s throat.

“Wanna get another one?” Rafe said, leaning down close to JJ’s ear.

“Yeah. OK,” JJ shouted back, eyes skipping away across the crowd.

Rafe turned and started walking back through the mass of people, forcing himself not to look back and just trust that JJ was following. He passed the bar and saw the tops of Kelce and Topper’s heads near the front of the queue but he kept walking, straight out of the front entrance and into the street. He walked until he was able to shake off the tinnitus buzz of the club, then he finally turned his head, seeing, to his relief, that JJ was striding along behind him, hands in his pockets.

“My place is-”

“I know,” JJ said, walking forward.

“How did you know? Before?” Rafe asked, genuinely curious.

“John B,” JJ said, leading the way, heading away from town down Colony Drive, where there was a cut through to Rafe’s apartment complex. They walked through the Angel Oaks in the darkness and Rafe itched to reach out and touch JJ, pull at him or push at him, out here where no one could see.

“How did you know about me?” JJ said eventually, quiet in the darkness.

Rafe laughed, surprised. “I wasn’t lying, JJ, literally everyone knows.”

“That I’m a faggot?” JJ said, stopping and turning to face Rafe. He didn’t look angry, but there was something cold in his voice.

“Well, yeah,” Rafe said. “It’s a small place, man. People talk.”

JJ nodded, turned around and carried on walking. Rafe concentrated on his shoulders, letting his eyes fall to the small of JJ’s back, the backs of his bare legs. He wanted to get back fast, in case JJ changed his mind, in case he disappeared for another month and Rafe had to drive around like a psycho looking for him. So he jogged to catch up with JJ and strode ahead, heading down the sandy cut through and getting his keys out of his pocket.

The complex was quiet, as it always was, a dull gray thing with a walkway along the second floor, metal steps up to Rafe’s front door and a carpark instead of a courtyard. Rafe wanted to say something about it, about how it wasn’t as nice as his father’s place, but then he remembered the Chateau and thought this was probably luxury to someone like JJ.

Inside the apartment they stood awkwardly for a moment, until JJ kicked off his shoes and tugged his vest over his head. Rafe stood and watched, cock twitching embarrassingly just from looking at the expanse of tanned skin in front of him, eyes trailing down to where JJ was already unbuttoning his shorts.

“This is what you want, right?” JJ said, almost annoyed, watching Rafe stare at him.

“Yeah,” Rafe said stupidly, stepping forward and leaning in to kiss JJ.

JJ turned his head away and said, “I don’t-” but stopped himself before he said anymore.

Rafe felt embarrassed, stupid for being so turned on, stupid for trying to kiss JJ and being knocked back  _ again _ . He felt his lip twitch angrily and he pushed at JJ’s shoulders. JJ looked at him, shocked for a second before his face slid into that familiar fighting grimace. JJ took a breath, some decision going on under the surface that Rafe wasn’t privy to, and pushed Rafe back, the slap of his hands on Rafe’s chest loud in the dark apartment.

They stood for a second and then they were fighting, not some gentle shoving back and forth like the last time, but real down-on-The-Cut fighting. JJ swung his fist and hit Rafe in the mouth, his teeth cutting into the inside of his cheek and spilling blood across his tongue. Rafe leaned back and hit JJ hard, hard enough that JJ stumbled back, giving Rafe the space to hit him again, this time a hard slap, making his ears ring. He bundled into JJ and shoved him back against the wall. He felt his own blood on his chin as he got his hand into JJ’s open shorts, finding him hard and hot underneath. 

“You’re a fucking psycho,” Rafe spat, curling his fingers around JJ’s cock and jacking him quick, pushing his own hips forward so he could get some friction too.

JJ tried to hit Rafe again, but they were too close, so instead he leaned forward and bit into the meat of the junction between Rafe’s neck and his shoulder, letting go to nudge his head hard against Rafe’s ear, making it pop.

Rafe got his arm up under JJ’s chin and pushed his head back, pinning him to the wall with the loud crack of a skull on plasterboard.

“This what you want?” Rafe said, echoing JJ’s own question, his hand moving fast now. Rafe could feel his own blood dripping between them, his cheek bleeding freely, but he didn’t stop. He watched JJ as he nodded, as he started to fidget when he got close. Rafe watched him, amazed, dumbfounded at the sight of him. He pulled his arm away from where he was keeping JJ pinned to the wall and pushed his free hand into the back of JJ’s shorts, reaching down between his ass cheeks until he felt the hot pucker of JJ's asshole.

“Fuck,” JJ reached forward, twisting his hands into Rafe’s polo shirt, mouth open and filthy as he looked up at Rafe and said, “Please.”

But before Rafe could do anything more JJ was already coming, grunting quiet like he’d learned to be secret about this kind of thing. His body shuddered forwards, pushing against the wall of Rafe’s body as he stretched out cat-like against him. 

They stayed like that for a minute, Rafe’s hands still in JJ’s shorts, JJ somehow having got his arms up and around Rafe’s shoulders, hanging off of him as he came down.

“Fuck,” JJ said again, shifting away to lean back against the wall.

Rafe looked down at his hands, one covered in JJ Maybank’s come, the other literally having just touched a human asshole. He walked to the kitchen and washed them, spitting blood into the sink and swilling his aching mouth out with water. He chanced a look at JJ, shirtless and fucked looking, still panting with his back against the wall.

“You done that with a dude before?” JJ asked, starting to tuck himself away to button his shorts back up.

“No,” Rafe said honestly, drying his hands on his shorts and realising with aching clarity how hard he was.

JJ’s eyes flicked to Rafe’s shorts and he threw a hand out towards the couch. “Sit down,” he said. “I’ll blow you.”

Rafe almost laughed, he’d thought about this happening so many times but never pictured it with such… casual indifference. He closed his hand over the bulge in his shorts and moved wordlessly to sit on the couch, watching JJ step around the coffee table and get down on his knees in front of him. JJ looked up at him, still flushed, and Rafe thought for a sickening moment that he was honestly the prettiest thing he had ever seen. He could taste blood in his mouth and as he watched JJ tug his shorts down he felt feral. He didn’t think he’d ever wanted to fuck someone so badly in his whole life.

When JJ closed his mouth around him he knew he wouldn’t last long, he bit down on his bleeding cheek in the hopes the pain would slow him down, but instead it had him thrusting up, desperate.

JJ wrapped a hand around him, twisting like he had definitely done this before, and looked up at Rafe as he pulled off, pink tongue running flat along the underside of his cock. Rafe groaned loud, definitely not used to having to keep quiet, and forced himself to look away as JJ ducked back down, trying not to think about his cock filling JJ’s mouth, his lips, his tongue.  _ Fuck _ .

He came quick, his hips pushing up involuntarily. But JJ was ready and held Rafe’s hips hard against the couch as he sucked him through it. Rafe felt wrung out, like he couldn’t speak. He breathed hard and slung an arm over his face so that JJ couldn’t see what he had done, so he couldn’t see what JJ had done.

“You done that before?” Rafe asked after a while, kind of joking.

JJ snorted. “What do you think?”

Rafe grunted, finally looking down at JJ who was still on his knees, looking up soft and open like Rafe had seen him look at the other Pogues. Rafe wanted to ask him to stay, realised he was desperate to ask him to stay. But he couldn’t, JJ made it clear what he wanted and anyway, Rafe wasn’t some… some fucking queer.

As they stared at each other the softness of JJ’s expression hardened. He got to his feet and walked to where his vest and boots were still strewn on the floor.

Rafe watched him from the couch, heart pounding, his pulse throbbing in his aching cheek. “Hey, Maybank,” he said, hating himself, “See you around, yeah?”

JJ nodded, ducked into this t-shirt and jammed his feet into his boots, opened the door to the apartment and left.


	4. Chapter 4

“They have a hot tub,” Sarah was saying happily. “I have no idea how they got it, but it’s _awesome_.”

Sarah had finally started talking about John B, about the Chateau and the _Pogues_ . She had been shy to talk about it with the family at first because of all the trouble, because of the whispers at the country club. But now at their weekly family meals she would drop in little pieces of information about them, about how Kiara could swim a mile in 30 minutes, how John B once crashed a catamaran into an anchored fishing boat and chipped his tooth on the boom, how JJ could play the harmonica _and_ the bass guitar.

Rafe couldn’t help but sit up and pay attention when she talked like this, he knew so little about JJ beyond the obvious, beyond the painful, intimate details of their encounters. It made their family meals bearable, at least.

“Well, honey, maybe we should get a hot tub?” Rose said, placing her knife and fork on her plate and looking across the table at Rafe’s father.

Ward chuckled. “I suppose we could, we’d have to move the bougainvillea.”

Rose looked genuinely shocked. “God, no, we can have it next to the pool.” She turned to Sarah and said, “Sarah, where does John B keep his hot tub? Does he have a pool house?”

Sarah’s eyebrows shot up and she glanced at Rafe, who couldn’t help but laugh, spluttering into his string beans.

“No, they just have it like,” Sarah put her hands out flat in front of her. “Just on the grass at the back of the house.”

“You know John B doesn’t actually live in a chateau?” Rafe said, side eyeing Rose. “That’s just what they call it.”

Rose grimaced. “I see.”

“Anyway,” Sarah said, as though Rose hadn’t interrupted. “They play this game where-”

“Does JJ stay with John B sometimes?” Rafe asked suddenly, his mouth working before his brain had time to shut him up.

“JJ?” Sarah looked confused. “Sometimes I guess, not when I’m there though. Why?”

Rafe made a noncommittal noise and said, “I don’t know, I just wondered.”

Sarah watched him and he looked back at his plate and carried on eating, ignoring her searching gaze.

“ _Anyway_ ,” she said again, launching into another story.

Rafe catalogued all the little pieces of information about JJ that he could, trying to build a picture of the person he had spent so many years orbiting but never really _truly_ colliding with. The JJ he knew was the polar opposite of the one Sarah described, the person Sarah spoke about was loud, talking a mile a minute, excited about everything or blissed out in the sun. He climbed trees and went crabbing, he knew about tides and forecasts and _astronomy_. The JJ Sarah knew was happy, Rafe realised, the version he knew was just in pain.

He listened to Sarah’s excited voice, how happy she seemed in the Pogues’ company, and thought bitterly about his own experiences with his friends, which ranged from selling them coke to laughing about ghosting girls, getting into fights and getting wasted. He found himself growing angry as she spoke, and if he was honest with himself he would have said he was jealous. It rose up from the pit of his stomach and lodged in his throat.

“And Pope is gonna be one of those CSI people, you know? CSI: Kildare!”

Rafe took a drink from his glass of water and put the glass down on the table hard enough that Sarah stopped talking. “Ok,” he said. “As fun as this all is, I literally can’t hear about John B and his wonder shack anymore, so I’m gonna get out of here.”

“Rafe?” Sarah said, half annoyed, half hurt.

He pushed himself away from the table and was thankful that no one else said anything as he walked out, the family obviously used to his outbursts. He grabbed his things from the drawing room and escaped out the front door. He felt like he had lulled Sarah into a false sense of security, laughing along with her and then reverting back to being the same contemptuous jerk he always was. She didn’t deserve that, he knew it, but he couldn’t stop himself.

He thought again about the baggie of coke he still had, untouched, now jammed into the back of one of the kitchen drawers back at his apartment, but he pushed the thought away.

Instead of heading home he got into his truck and decided to take a drive, clear his head. He found his way onto The Cut and drove aimlessly around, he passed the track that ran to John B’s place but didn’t go down it, passed by Barry’s place but avoided it like the plague. Eventually he found himself driving towards where he knew JJ lived with his father, the roads a tangle of Angel Oak and Wax Myrtle, so thick it almost looked tropical. The sun burned overhead and he cranked the AC, wondering how people out here in sticks handled the summer without the luxuries they had over on Figure 8.

As he drew closer to JJ’s place he saw a figure skulking along the side of the road and he knew, _he knew_ , that it was JJ. He could tell by the curve of his shoulders, the hang of his head, by his big damn boots.

He drove until he caught up with him then pulled up beside him, rolling the passenger side window down. JJ turned his head to look suspiciously at the truck, eyes sliding up in disbelief as he saw Rafe.

“You really are fucking stalking me,” he said, hitching his backpack up on his shoulder. But he didn’t sound particularly angry, didn’t sound like he was bothered.

Rafe had no excuse this time so he just said, “What are you doing out here?”

“Walking. What are you doing out here?

“Driving,” Rafe said. “You want a ride somewhere? I can take you home?”

“I’m not going back there,” JJ said, his tone not to be argued with.

Rafe didn’t push it and instead looked away from JJ towards the trees as he said, “You wanna come back to my place?”

JJ seemed to consider this, looking up and down the road, chewing his lip. Then he nodded and said, “Sure.”

They drove back in silence, until JJ huffed and said, “This is a nice truck, man.”

“It’s my dad’s,” Rafe said. “Technically. He paid for it.”

“Think he’d mind if I took it for a spin?”

Rafe scoffed. “Maybank, you are _never_ getting near the wheel of this thing. No fucking way.”

“I’m a good driver,” JJ said with a smile.

“Yeah right, you and your little Pogues? I know all about the catamaran.” Rafe meant for it to sound like a threat but JJ let out a bark of laughter, and then descended into a fit of giggles. “I am _dead_ serious, man,” Rafe said.

“Oh man, that was good, that was so great,” JJ said, wiping his eyes. “How the hell do you know about that? We were like fourteen when that happened.”

 _Fuck_.

“I, er,” Rafe stumbled. “Sarah. She mentioned it one time.”

“Ahh of course, your spy, huh?” JJ leaned forward and started fiddling with the AC controls, snorting when Rafe slapped at his hand.

“No, it’s not like that, she likes you guys, for whatever reason,” Rafe said, turning his concentration back to the road. “She just talks about you sometimes.”

JJ looked sly, Rafe could see it out of the corner of his eye. “What does she say about me?”

“That you’re a dumbass and a menace,” Rafe said without a pause. JJ laughed again, a soft, genuine thing. Rafe felt an overwhelming urge to laugh along with him; how easy it would be to look across and smile at JJ, how easy it would be to share in this joke and for there to be no victims, no pain caused by that laughter.

“She ain’t wrong,” JJ said, turning to look out of the window as the trees gave way to the grassy dunes and low buildings of town.

Rafe let himself glance at JJ, at his grubby cap, his blonde hair curling wetly at the nape of his neck. He looked at the long line of his neck, at the baggy collar of his t-shirt, his tanned skin underneath. Rafe twisted his fingers around the steering wheel and forced himself to look away, back to the road ahead.

Back at his apartment Rafe fought against the urge to try and kiss JJ, he wanted it so badly he had to bite his lips, feeling desperate. 

They had had a little back and forth, a scuffle, like the first time, but nothing so violent as the fight that had split Rafe’s cheek open. It felt like perhaps they’d both had enough of getting angry for the day. Rafe didn’t ask JJ what had happened at home for him to be stalking along in the midday heat in the middle of nowhere, but he could take a guess; some altercation with his cokehead father, some fight, the same old shit.

Rafe wondered how JJ managed to be so _happy_ when he was with Sarah and the rest of the Pogues, how he could be anything like Sarah described given what he had to put up with at home. Rafe struggled to crack a smile after interacting with his own father, the shame of being such a colossal disappointment like a crushing weight upon him. Maybe JJ was just a better person, maybe he had a kinder heart, a softer soul.

But whatever, Rafe thought, struggling with himself. _It. Was. Whatever_.

Rafe had got JJ onto his knees, naked aside from his briefs, hard and panting. It was the violence, Rafe was sure of it, it was the violence that got JJ going like this. Whatever was in JJ’s heart didn’t matter when they got together like this, it was the anger under his skin that mattered.

JJ looked wrecked already, he looked up at Rafe as he pressed his hand against the bulge in his briefs. “Please,” he gasped, and Rafe slapped him, the sting of it making JJ groan.

Rafe leaned down and got a hand in JJ’s hair, pulling his head back and leaning in to kiss his open mouth, giving in to the urge. JJ tried to turn away but Rafe held his hair tight, twisting at the dirty-blonde strands until JJ hissed. Rafe kissed at the corner of JJ’s mouth, the apple of his cheek, then bit at his jaw. Why JJ didn’t wanna kiss he didn’t know, but it made him feel crazy, made him want it even more.

“Rafe,” JJ said, desperate. He’d never called him by his name before and it made Rafe’s head spin.

“Yeah?” Rafe choked out, leaning over JJ, looking down at him on his knees.

“You can fuck me,” JJ said, looking up at Rafe as though he were in pain. “If you want.”

Rafe took a second to process what JJ had said, played it over in his head before nodding dumbly. He pressed a hand over JJ’s mouth and manhandled him over onto his hands and knees. 

“Like this?” Rafe asked, pressing his chest to JJ’s back, enveloping him. He’d done this before, at least, but with a girl, so he wanted to make sure he was doing it right. “Do you want it like this?”

JJ nodded hard, his mouth still covered by Rafe’s big hand, and he groaned when Rafe got two wet fingers inside his briefs and between his ass cheeks. JJ pushed his ass back into Rafe’s hand, sinking filthy slow to the ground as Rafe pushed a finger inside him.

“God,” Rafe said, disbelieving, looking down at his wet dream come to life. “You’re so fucking-” But he lost his words as JJ opened his mouth against his hand, pink tongue poking out to lick at his fingers. Rafe’s brain seemed to shut down for a moment. Between JJ’s tongue and the finger he had in his ass, there didn’t seem space for coherent thoughts. But his body moved without instruction and Rafe curled two fingers into JJ’s mouth, who closed his lips around them and _sucked_ like they had planned it. Rafe clamped his eyes shut and hung his head, willing his orgasm to literally _fuck off_.

He pushed a second finger into JJ’s ass, almost like it was a dream, pulling out when JJ pulled away from the fingers in his mouth and said desperately, “That’s good, that’s ok, just do it, man.”

Rafe didn’t know, when he’d done this with a girl this part had taken ages, but JJ was pushing back against his hand like he was ready, like he could take it. Rafe realised he was still fully clothed and he scrabbled with the fly of his shorts, pushing them down with his briefs, grabbing his cock and praying he lasted more than thirty seconds.

He looked at JJ below him, down on his elbows, ass in the air. He couldn’t believe his luck, that of all the people on the island, here was JJ with _him_ , waiting for him.

Rafe let his cock nudge up against JJ’s asshole, making him groan, wondering how the fuck it was gonna fit in there. He held his cock and pushed in slow, worried at how tight JJ felt, but JJ clearly knew what he could take and he pushed back hard and slow, taking Rafe inch by burning inch. When Rafe bottomed out he made an embarrassing noise, tried to remember that he was the one doing the fucking, not JJ. But it didn’t feel like that, it felt like JJ was, was… _taking_ him.

Rafe started fucking him fast, utterly unable to pretend like he wasn’t about to combust. He put a hand over JJ’s mouth and said, “Tell me to stop,” as he moved his hand to cover JJ’s nose, pinching tight for a second before letting go. JJ clamped up tight around him and pushed back onto Rafe’s cock, desperate.

“Is it ok?” Rafe said, biting at JJ’s shoulder, mouthing at the nape of his neck. Thinking for a moment about how he had looked at this exact spot while in the car.

JJ nodded, shuddering under him. “You can, you can do it again.”

Rafe held him again, hand clamped tight over JJ’s mouth, his thumb and forefinger pinching his nose as he fucked him. The third time he did it JJ came with a shout, the loudest Rafe had ever heard him, and he sunk so low to the ground that his chest touched the floor, his fists clenched tight on the tile as Rafe fucked him through it.

It was the best thing Rafe had ever seen, the best thing he’d ever felt; JJ wrung out, sucking in breaths like a drowning man. Rafe leaned down and wrapped an arm around JJ’s middle and started fucking him quick, biting his tongue when he came to stop himself from saying some dumb fucking shit. 

He pushed his forehead between JJ’s shoulders as his breathing slowed and found he didn’t wanna pull out, he wanted to stay inside, plastered to JJ’s back forever. But JJ was already groaning under him, pushing up onto his elbows and cracking his neck.

“You’re a hell of a fuck, Maybank,” Rafe said in the end, and cringed at himself.

JJ snorted, shifting as Rafe pulled out. “Thanks, I guess.”

Rafe ached and he winched when he sat back against the kitchen counter, his shorts an uncomfortable tangle under his ass. He watched JJ shakily get to his feet and start to gather up his clothes.

“Hey, you, er, you don’t have to go right away, you know?” Rafe said, looking up at JJ. Thinking for a second about what it would be like to suck his cock. “We could... I got some weed.”

JJ chewed at the inside of his lip and his eyes darted from Rafe to the front door. “I’m meant to meet Pope and Kiara, we got a thing. I, er.”

Rafe held up his hands. “Whatever, that’s cool. That’s cool.” Rafe tried to look unbothered as he hefted himself up from the floor and said, “Maybe next time.”

JJ nodded, pulling his clothes on and tucking his feet into his boots. “Yeah, man.” He cast around for his bag, grabbing it and throwing it over his shoulder. “You know,” he said as he reached the apartment door. “You can call me by my name, you don’t have to pretend we’re not…”

“Not what?”

JJ gesticulated, swirling his hands in the air.

“Fucking?”

“Well, yeah, pretty sure we’re on first name terms now.”

Rafe smiled, small and grateful. “Ok, yeah.”

JJ nodded, looked around awkwardly and then left.

Rafe expected JJ to disappear again for a couple of weeks after that. He drank himself to sleep that night thinking dejectedly about having to go roaming the island again looking for him. But against all his expectations JJ appeared at his door the following day, rapping his knuckles against the door jamb and holding up a joint when Rafe pulled the door open.

“Wanna get high?” he asked, eyebrows raised.

Rafe didn’t know what to say so he just nodded, grabbed his keys and followed JJ without a word.

They sat out on the dunes near to his complex, in the space where Figure 8 stopped and The Cut began, looking out across the bay while they passed the joint back and forth.

"We're almost on The Cut," JJ said, voice heavy already.

"Yeah, my dad stuck me out here. Guess he wanted me as far away as possible without literally exiling me."

JJ looked out at the gentle waves and said, "My dad's an asshole too."

"Why don't you just move out?" Rafe said, watching JJ blow smoke out into the hot air.

"I been trying, but gardening for your friends over on Figure 8 doesn't exactly pay great," JJ grinned sadly, holding out the joint for Rafe to take. "I used to stay at the Chateau a lot but now, y’know, your sister's there all the time and it's like, I don't wanna third wheel."

Rafe nodded, taking a drag of the joint, pulling the hot smoke into his lungs and holding it longer than necessary, reveling in the burning feeling in his chest.

“I used to break into my friend’s houses when they were on holiday,” Rafe said without thinking. “Before my dad gave me this place to stay.”

JJ spluttered, laughing, and Rafe let himself shoot a grin in his direction. “A cokehead and a home invader, huh?”

Rafe grinned, sly, and made a kissy face, almost without thinking, and JJ smiled but looked away.

Rafe squinted against the burning sun and asked, "How come you don't, er, how come you don't like that?"

JJ’s mouth twisted. He looked out across the water and then back at Rafe, like he was deciding how much he wanted to say. "The kinds of dudes I normally get with? That's like... that's _gay_ , you know? First time I tried to kiss a guy he fractured my eyesocket." JJ looked down at his hands and turned one of his rings over and over as he spoke, not looking up at Rafe. "You learn pretty quick what leads to a beating."

Rafe frowned, a muscle under his eye twitching. "But. But you like it rough, yeah?"

"Yeah, when I _choose_ it. Otherwise it's just violence," JJ trailed off, hand waving in the air.

Rafe nodded, wondering how young JJ was when some guy had hit him hard enough to _fracture his fucking eyesocket_. He thought of all the times he had hurt JJ over the years, too many to count, all that unsolicited violence. JJ liked to take a beating cus that's all he knew, Rafe realised with a sickly twist of his stomach. He came to Rafe cus it was the only time he could control it.

Rafe wanted to say something to him, wanted to tell him they didn't have to do that, that JJ didn't have to be treated like shit if he didn't want to be. That Rafe just treated him like that because… well, because that’s what they had always done. But Rafe was a coward, so he said nothing, just took another long drag of the joint and passed it back to JJ.

“So what’s all this?” Rafe said eventually.

“What?”

Rafe indicated the space between them. “Are we friends now?”

“No,” JJ said, taking a drag on the joint. “I just didn’t have anyone else to get high with.”

Rafe rolled his eyes. Then he looked at JJ’s mouth around the joint and said, “Do you wanna come back to my place after?”

JJ squinted across at Rafe as smoke got in his eyes. “I literally can’t, I have to work. The Clayton’s have some scandalously long grass, dude, needs sorting asap.”

Rafe made a face. “So we’re not friends but you came all the way over the other side of the island to smoke a joint with me and you’re not even gonna get laid?”

“Yeah, that’s like, just being _bros_ ,” JJ said in a deep voice, attempting, Rafe could only guess, to sound like Topper.

“I don’t fuck any of my other bros, _bro_ ,” Rafe said.

“That’s cus we’re like, the broest,” JJ said. “It’s the most macho you can be, just like, fucking and getting wasted.”

“Are you joking right now?”

“Yeah, I’m fucking joking, dipshit,” JJ took one last drag of the joint and handed it back to Rafe, reaching out and clapping his hand on Rafe’s shoulder as he stood up. Rafe knew that the moment was finished, their smoking session was done, the day was over. He looked down at his trainers in the sand as JJ said, “I gotta go, but. But I’ll see you around, yeah?”

Rafe looked up, silent, mind working too slow to try and think of something to say to get JJ to stay. He opened his mouth and closed it again, staring up at JJ like an idiot before saying, “Any time, man.”

JJ smiled down at him, almost soft, and said, “See ya, bro,” as he turned and walked away.


	5. Chapter 5

JJ started turning up a couple of times a week after that, sometimes he would slouch in past Rafe, dump his bag on the floor and lean up against the kitchen counter with a sly smile, casual and infuriating, waiting for Rafe to shut the door and follow him. Other times he would barge in and start snapping at Rafe, tugging at him or pushing him until Rafe lost his temper and got him on his knees, when he would go quiet and wanting, waiting for whatever Rafe decided to give him. 

Sometimes, though not very often, JJ would turn up with a six pack of beer and would wander straight over to the kitchen, get two glasses out of the cupboard (always making a point of using the hole that Rafe had punched through the door at New Years’ rather than opening it like a normal person) and pour them both a drink. When JJ was in these kinds of moods they would sometimes sit in front of the TV watching trash, or go up onto the flat roof of Rafe’s complex, where they had put two cheap striped loungers facing out over the car lot. Rafe liked the fighting, sure, he liked the fucking even more, but his favourite was when JJ was like this, calm and open, leaning across the asphalt of the roof to clink their glasses of beer together and say in a British accent, “To your health, good sir,” as the sun set at their backs.

They would talk about the island, about their childhoods, so similar in so many ways and yet so astonishingly different. They both grew up on the water, their young lives defined by experiences out on the Sound and in the Bay. Though Rafe’s experiences tended to involve lounging on yachts while JJ’s involved hauling crabs, catching redfish and trout and flounder to sell to restaurants on the island. Rafe thought JJ’s life sounded charmed, a romantic thing in sepia tones, but every now and then JJ would let slip something about his father that made his eyes go distant, made him clam up. When this happened Rafe would start talking about some dumb shit he had done as a kid, something to get JJ back in the room, to get his attention away from the monster that always seemed to be lurking in the back of his mind.

Sometimes they’d climb down off the roof and Rafe would tug JJ back into his apartment before he could make an excuse to leave, wanting so desperately to kiss him he would bury his face in JJ’s shoulder and hold him tight, opening his mouth and sucking at the warm skin there, making JJ squirm. They weren’t really ever gentle with one another, but after a couple of beers and a few hours out in the sun they were blissed out and sleepy, and Rafe would fuck JJ slow and lazy on the couch, whispering filthy things in his ear to make him groan. JJ was still quiet and sometimes he could still be skittish, but Rafe did anything he could to get JJ talking, to get him to grit out a quiet, “ _Please_ ,” a hushed, “ _Rafe, fuck_.”

Rafe never asked him to stay, but sometimes he would slump on top of JJ when they were finished, hoping he would just take the hint and fall asleep under him, but he always had an excuse to leave, something he had to get to, even if it was one in the morning.

It was… It was whatever.

One day in the middle of July JJ turned up at his apartment, joint in hand. He didn’t have to say anything, he just waved the joint in the air and hitched his backpack up onto his shoulder as Rafe grabbed his keys and followed JJ without a word.

They walked along the overgrown cut through together and out onto the dunes at the back of Rafe’s complex, shoes sliding on the hot sand. JJ picked a spot under the shade of the Angel Oaks in an attempt to avoid the worst of the midday sun beating down on them, but even then it was still stiflingly hot. Rafe let himself look out of the corner of his eye as JJ tugged off his vest, pitted with hot rock burns, and lay back in the sand, already huffing out smoke against the heat.

Rafe sat with his knees up, his arms slung around them, fists twisted together, a tense ball in comparison to JJ, languid in the sand.

“Lie down and take a hit,” JJ said, reaching out and tapping at the sand next to him. “No wonder you’re such a violent motherfucker,” JJ said with a huff. “You’re the most tense person I’ve ever met.”

Rafe rolled his eyes but lay back on the sand, taking the joint from JJ and taking a few long drags and letting the smoke float up gentle and silent from his open mouth. He could tell JJ was watching, could feel his eyes on him, so he closed his lips slow around the joint and took a last drag before reaching out to pass it back over. He looked at JJ, who swallowed as he took the joint, eyes skittering from his mouth to his throat and back again.

“You’re,” JJ started then fell silent.

“What?” Rafe wanted to lean across, slide his hand across the flat muscles of JJ’s stomach. He wanted to beg him to speak, _what? What am I?_ He could see JJ’s brain ticking over, could see him changing the subject behind his eyes, he wanted to shake him.

“Do you think that you’ll ever leave the island?” JJ said at last.

Rafe shifted so that he could look at JJ from where he was lying back against the sand, feeling like he might sink to the centre of the earth. “Maybe,” he said. “I dunno, what would I do?”

“Don’t you wanna like, do something with your life?” JJ asked.

Rafe made a noise. “You been talking to my dad or what?”

JJ ignored him and said, “I mean, what do you wanna _do_?”

Rafe looked back at JJ, at his bare chest, his throat, his lips, and said, “I wanna kiss you,” his brain taking a long moment to catch up with what he had just said.

JJ just stared at him, joint burning away between his fingers. Rafe tried to think of something to say, some taunt, but his brain was too fuzzy, too clouded. Eventually JJ put his elbow into the sand and angled himself up, took a drag on the joint and leaned down over Rafe.

Rafe watched him, his red eyes, his blurred edges, leaning down above him. When JJ’s lips touched his own he opened his mouth, accepting what JJ gave him without question, pulling the smoke back into his lungs and letting it out through his nose. It wasn’t quite a kiss, but it had Rafe’s heart pounding, his lips buzzing.

“That’s pretty gay, Rafe,” JJ said softly, leaning away to slump back into the sand.

“You’ve literally sucked my dick, dude,” Rafe replied.

JJ grinned. “Touche.”

“What about you, would you ever leave?” Rafe asked after a moment, squinting up against the sun.

“How could I?” JJ responded. “I’m here for life, man, just like my dad. I got no way off this island.”

Rafe chewed at the inside of his lip, a habit he was sure he had got from JJ, and said, “I’ll take you off the island.”

“Yeah?” JJ laughed. “Where would you take me?”

Rafe shrugged. “I dunno, somewhere fucking far away.”

“What and leave all your free shit?” JJ pulled himself up, sitting hunched in the sand. “You got it sweet here, dude, free apartment, free truck, no job, no responsibilities-”

“Yeah, no family, no prospects, no future.”

“You got family.”

“My dad hates me,” Rafe said, huffing. “Rose hates me, Sarah’s fucking scared of me or something.”

JJ looked at him and said, “You can be a scary dude.”

Rafe pulled himself up so that he was sitting next to JJ and asked, “Are you scared of me?” He’d meant for it to sound like a taunt, but it came out too soft, too pleading.

JJ shrugged. “I used to be, I guess.”

“Not anymore?”

“How could I be?”

Rafe didn’t know what to say to that so he said nothing, turning it over in his mind as he watched JJ look out across the water.

“Why do you come around here?” Rafe asked eventually.

“ _You just get me_ ,” JJ said in a Valley Girl voice, like it was a joke. Rafe snorted but he felt the grain of truth in JJ’s words, the particle of honesty around which JJ spun a pearl. “Couple-a regular dirtbags, me and you.”

Rafe nodded like that’s all it was. But it was more than that, he knew that now. More than the anger, more than the violence. It was the pain too, the shame, the feeling of being alone, of never being good enough. They were two sides of the same coin, Rafe thought, looking at the side of JJ’s head and wishing he could fucking express any of this to him.

“You wanna come around here tomorrow?” Rafe said instead.

JJ glanced sideways at Rafe and nodded with a smile that was so small it was barely there, but Rafe saw it. He saw it.

The next day JJ pushed his way into Rafe’s apartment with blood down his front, his lip split and oozing, swelling up fat and cherry red, while a dark bruise bloomed over his eye, turning sickly yellow down towards his ear.

Rafe stepped aside as he opened the door and let him barge his way in. “What the fuck happened to you?”

“Nothing,” JJ said sternly.

Rafe almost laughed. “It’s clearly not nothing, what happened?”

“Nothing, I just got into it with someone.”

“Who?” Rafe swung the door closed and walked over to the kitchen, where JJ was helping himself to a beer from the fridge. “Who did this to you?”

“No one!” JJ clunked the edge of the beer bottle on the counter and the cap went flying into the living room. “Why do you care anyway?”

Rafe rolled his eyes. “JJ, who did this?”

“I told you! Fucking no one!” JJ started chugging his beer, wincing at his split lip.

Rafe knew, suddenly and with utter clarity, who had done this to JJ. He realised who was likely to blame for all the other times Rafe had seen JJ with bruises he himself did not give him; after New Years’, after the Chateau. There were countless times he had seen JJ was some bruise, some cut, fresh or fading or healed white and soft.

Rafe set his jaw and looked away. “Fine,” he said. “Whatever.”

He walked away and left JJ in the kitchen, wandered down the hall and into the bathroom. He moved without thinking, putting the plug in the bath and turning on both taps, grabbing some towels from the cupboard under the sink and throwing them on the closed toilet lid. It was a shitty bathroom, he knew that, nothing like what he’d had back at his father’s place, with its freestanding bath and a separate shower with a waterfall showerhead. Black metal and clean white tiles. Here he had a bath that was too short, a shower that was too low, and limescale on the white tiles that he couldn’t get rid of. JJ would only have been in here to piss, he’d never stayed long enough to shower, let alone take a bath.

When the bath was half full Rafe walked back out to the kitchen, where JJ was already starting on his second beer.

“Come here,” he said, firm, like he got when JJ wanted to be pushed around. 

JJ rolled his eyes but he followed anyway, leaving his bottle of beer on the kitchen counter and walking behind Rafe to the bathroom.

“Take your clothes off and get in,” Rafe said, pointed at the tub.

JJ snorted, laughing like he was angling for a fight. “What?”

“I said, take your clothes off and get in.”

“Is this a fucking hint?”

“Yeah sure, if you want, just get in the damn tub.”

JJ narrowed his eyes at Rafe, but started to undress. He pulled his bloodied top over his head and shuffled out of his shorts, toed off his shoes and socks. He turned to look at Rafe before he pulled his briefs down, almost as though he was shy.

“You just gonna stand there and watch me?”

“JJ, I’ve seen you naked literally so many times.”

JJ looked around the bathroom and pushed his briefs down to his ankles, stepping out of them and into the still running bath. He huffed out a breath as he sunk into the water, his hands gripping the sides of the tub as he lowered himself down. 

There were bruises on his ribs and another near the small of his back, but Rafe didn’t say anything. Instead he stepped forward and leaned across to turn off the water.

“Is it ok?” he said, not looking at JJ.

“Yeah. It’s… It’s fine.”

Rafe nodded then grabbed at the flannel that hung over the tap and a bottle of shower gel, resolutely not looking at JJ as he squirted some soap onto the flannel and made a lather.

“Rafe,” JJ said, quiet and unsure in the echo of the bathroom. “What the fuck are you doing?”

“I’m...” What the fuck _was_ he doing? He decided he had no idea, so instead he turned back to JJ and said, “Sit up.”

JJ stared at him, searching, but sat up without arguing. Rafe found he was nervous for some reason, he wanted to swallow but he didn’t want JJ to see. So he moved around him and pressed the flannel to the back of JJ’s neck, swiping down over his shoulders and to the middle of his back.

JJ let out a relieved sigh, as though he’d been waiting for another blow, some new kind of pain, but Rafe just pulled the flannel back up to JJ’s neck, to just below his hairline, and squeezed at the muscle there, caught between his fingers and his thumb. JJ’s head fell forward as he did and Rafe tried not to listen to the tiny echoing sound JJ made. 

“Alright, lean back,” he said, his own voice quiet for once. JJ swallowed and leaned back, wincing as his bruised back touched the side of the tub. Rafe did _not_ look at JJ’s half hard cock under the water as he did so, and instead ran the flannel up across JJ’s collarbone, up under his ear and down across the bruise near his eye, gentle with the drying blood there. He rinsed the flannel in the tub and brought it back up to JJ’s face, wiping at his split lip, at the blood that still dotted his chin, his jaw.

Rafe felt his heart beating in his throat as he looked at JJ, who was clearly utterly confused, red high up on his cheek bones.

“Rafe.” JJ’s voice was hoarse, and he cleared his throat as Rafe ran the flannel down JJ’s bruised side, his hand sinking under the water towards JJ’s cock. “Jesus, Rafe.”

Rafe watched his own hand sink beneath the water, an inch from JJ’s cock. Rafe wanted to say something, he wanted to ask if he could touch JJ, if he even wanted to be touched. He swallowed, his words stuck in his throat as JJ reached up and got a wet hand in Rafe’s t-shirt and pulled him forward.

“You… you can kiss me,” JJ said, voice a hushed echo in the quiet bathroom. “If you want.”

Rafe nodded and leaned forward, pressing his lips to JJ’s. He could feel the heat of JJ’s swollen lip, he could taste the copper tang of his blood. He tried to be gentle but JJ tugged him forward and opened his mouth to him, his tongue touching Rafe’s lips as Rafe got a hand in JJ’s hair, pulling him closer still.

"Get in," JJ said in a rush against Rafe’s lips, reaching down and trying to pull at Rafe’s t-shirt.

Rafe laughed low. "I’m too big, dude, too big. You get out."

JJ grunted and then grumbled something as he started to pull himself up, wincing as he did. 

Rafe reached for a towel and without thinking about it wrapped it around JJ's shoulders, using it to pull him forward and kiss him again, JJ’s soaking body hard against him.

“Where to, big boy?” JJ said, trying too hard to sound casual.

"The bedroom's this way," Rafe said, pulling JJ out of the bathroom and down the hall.

"The bedroom, huh?" JJ said with a smile, blue eyes sparkling.

"Yeah, unless you wanna go sit on your own on the couch?" 

JJ held up his hands. "No, no. Lead the way, dude."

At least Rafe’s bed was big enough for the two of them, it felt like luxury after so many evenings spent rubbing up against one another on the couch, the two of them seeming massive and ridiculous in such a tiny space.

“What do you want?” Rafe said as he kneeled on the bed, shrugging off his clothes in a rush.

“Whatever,” JJ said, looking Rafe up and down as though he’d never seen him naked before. Rafe considered this and then realised JJ probably never had, Rafe always ended up with most of his clothes on for one reason or another. “You’re, um.”

Rafe couldn’t help but grin, put his hand in the middle of JJ’s chest and pushed until JJ lay back on the bed.

“Can I fuck you?” Rafe asked as he shifted over the bed, getting a knee under JJ’s thigh and leaning down over him. “I’ll be careful.”

“Yeah,” JJ said, reaching up to get his hands in Rafe’s hair and pull him down for another kiss.

Rafe pressed his knuckles gently against the bruise over JJ’s eye before leaning up to kiss it. He kissed the bruise near his ear, the cut on his lip, brushed his fingers over the bruises on his ribs.

“I’ll be real careful, JJ,” he said again as JJ shuddered against him, pushing their hips together.

They fucked with JJ on his back like that, and when JJ came he covered his face with his hands as though he didn’t want Rafe to see him, wincing when he accidentally hit his own lip with the heel of his palm.

“Dumbass,” Rafe said on a breath, laughing even as came, trying hard not to push against JJ’s sore body as his orgasm shuddered through him. When he pulled out JJ winced again, the tip of his tongue poking out to dab at his swollen lip.

“That fucking hurt,” JJ said.

“Which bit?”

“All of it.”

Rafe snorted, reaching up to ruffle JJ’s hair. They lay together in the middle of the bed for a moment before JJ started to shift away.

“You can stay,” Rafe said, reaching out and gripping JJ’s wrist as he tried to slide out of the bed. “I don’t mind.”

JJ’s eyes searched Rafe’s face then he looked away. “I don’t want you to feel sorry for me.”

“I don’t,” Rafe said, although he did, but that wasn’t why he wanted him to stay. “I want you to stay. So I don’t have to wake up on my fucking own in the morning.”

JJ laughed, obviously not sure if Rafe was joking or not.

“I’m serious,” Rafe said, pulling at JJ’s wrist until he was back in the middle of the bed. “Just stay tonight.” Rafe pulled until JJ was close enough that he could lean in and kiss him, the soft press of his lips making Rafe’s heart thud hard in his chest. He felt like JJ wanted to pull away, but then he tilted his head and let Rafe kiss him properly, let Rafe crowd him down into the pillows, let Rafe run a hand up the side of his neck and brush his fingers under his ear.

“Who knew, huh?” JJ said when they broke apart.

“What?”

“What a big dumb fucking softie you are.”

Rafe rolled his eyes. “Shut up, man.”

JJ laughed a little, almost sad. “I never had a dude treat me like that,” he said quietly. “Never had a dude be soft with me before.”

Rafe stared at JJ then bundled him up, pulled him over so that he was lying on his back with JJ grumbling against his chest.

“I’ll be soft with you, dude,” Rafe said, hugging his arms around JJ, thrilling for a second when JJ slowly draped an arm across his waist. It felt like taming a wild animal, and that slowly, slowly he was gaining its trust. “Whenever you want.”

JJ was quiet for a long time, then he said, almost too quiet for Rafe to hear, “Thank you.”

When Rafe woke up in the morning he had a momentary sense of dread, which was fairly standard for him; what had he done the night before? What mess had he made? But then he looked across as the bundled up lump beside him and remembered that nothing bad had happened, just JJ.

He tugged at the sheets until JJ grumbled, rolling over onto his front and burying his face in Rafe’s white pillows. It was stiflingly hot under the covers so Rafe tugged them off completely, shuffling to nudge up against JJ. He rested his chin on the back of JJ’s shoulder and spread his hand over the other, touching his bicep, his scapula, running his hand down to the small of JJ’s back, squeezing at the meat of his hips. He let himself look at his ass too, so white against the tanned skin of his back.

JJ’s bruises seemed darker than they had yesterday and when Rafe tipped his head up he saw dots of blood on the white pillow case where JJ’s lip or his eye must have oozed sticky and red in the night. 

He ran his hand back up JJ’s side and pushed his fingers into JJ’s hair, carding through it like an ape.

“Hey,” JJ groaned, voice rough and muffled by the pillow. “I think I got blood on your bed.”

Rafe continued to play with JJ’s hair, letting himself just _be_ for once. No need to get riled, no need to get defensive, no need to start a fight. Rafe realised he didn’t actually have to do any of those things, he could just lie here, guiltless, and play with JJ Maybank’s hair without consequence.

“Don’t worry about it, they’re just a hundred and fifty bucks from the mainland, you can run and grab me some more,” Rafe said into JJ’s shoulder.

JJ struggled to turn his head to look at Rafe, his neck cracking loudly. “A hundred and fifty bucks, are you fucking serious?”

“They’re my dad’s,” he said with a small shrug. “Well, Rose’s.”

JJ closed one eye, trying to focus on Rafe’s face. “Jesus.”

“Do you wanna get breakfast?” Rafe said, changing the subject.

“Together?”

“No, separate,” Rafe rolled his eyes. “Yeah, together, dumbass.”

JJ squinted up at him, dried blood on his temple. “What if someone sees?”

“Who’s gonna see?”

“I dunno.”

“Pfft,” Rafe said and got himself up onto his hands and knees, maneuvering so that he was hovering over JJ, who was still lying on his front. “Whatever, I’m hungry,” Rafe said, flopping down on top of JJ, his half hard cock nudging snugly up against JJ’s ass. 

“Urgh, fuck,” JJ said, breathless. “You weigh a fucking tonne, man.”

“That’s cus I eat my breakfast every day,” Rafe said, rolling his hips distractedly against JJ’s ass. He let his body lay heavy over JJ, who stayed slumped and exhausted under him, pinned to the bed by the sheer mass of Rafe’s body. “I wanna-”

JJ huffed out a laugh. “You wanna what?”

Rafe bit at his shoulder, kissed the back of his neck. He was hard but he didn’t wanna fuck, he just… just _wanted_.

“I wanna put my dick in you,” he said eventually, snorting as he laughed.

“God, get off me,” JJ said, wrists clicking as he pushed both his and Rafe’s body up off the bed. “You’re an idiot.”

Rafe laughed then, so surprised that JJ had lifted the two of them off the bed that he tumbled sideways, slipping off the edge of the mattress and onto the floor.

“You’re buying, right?” JJ said, looking down at him over the edge of the bed.

Rafe nodded. “I gotta shower,” he said, hauling himself up off the floor. He looked at JJ in the middle of his bed, blonde hair crazy from sleep, his eyes bruising and lidded. Rafe took in the weight of him, real and golden, here in his apartment. He couldn’t stop himself as he leaned forward, cupping JJ’s jaw and kissing him, careful of his split lip. His heart pounded and he hoped that JJ couldn’t tell how much he wanted him, _whatever it was_ that he wanted. When JJ tipped his head up, mouth open, Rafe let slip a tiny noise, a breath of want, that had him straightening up and stalking straight to the shower.


	6. Chapter 6

They went to a little place called The SaltBox that did BLTs and gyros, a green wood building with a shingle lot out the front, slow spinning fans overhead and blue buzzing fly traps. It wasn’t anything like what Rafe had been used to but over the last few months he had been enough times that he was considered a local, and when he wandered in with JJ in tow the waitress behind the counter smiled and called his name.

“Good morning, Rafe,” she said. “The usual is it?”

“Sure thing, and something for my friend here?” he said, taking a seat at the bar.

“Coffee, please, ma’am,” JJ said. “And whatever he’s having to eat.”

“Two coffees, two reubens,” the waitress said with a smile.

“Didn’t take you for a reuben kind of guy?” JJ said as he sat down beside Rafe.

Rafe snorted. “I’d never even heard of corned beef before I came here. I came in one morning with the worst hangover and just picked the first thing on the menu.”

“Corned beef is the shit,” JJ said with a nod of his head.

“Corned beef is. The. Shit,” Rafe agreed, running his hand through his hair as the waitress returned with two white mugs of black coffee. He glanced at JJ, at his bruised face, and cleared his throat. “Hey, man, you know you don't have to go back to your dad's place if you don't want to."

JJ looked at him, obviously deciding whether to play dumb or just accept the fact that Rafe knew exactly who had given him a beating. In the end he looked back at his coffee and said, "I think I’m gonna stay at John B’s for a couple of days.”

"That's cool, that's cool," Rafe said. "But if my sister’s there and you don't wanna third-wheel you can, er, you can stay at my place. With me," he added lamely.

JJ narrowed his eyes at Rafe, not like he was calculating, not like he was distrusting, but more like he was trying to see through something, trying to decipher some puzzle.

"It's not," Rafe paused and pushed his hand through his hair again. "I don't want anything from you, it's not like that."

The waitress reappeared with their sandwiches, placing them down on the counter with the bill and a smile.

“I have to get my shit from my place,” JJ said, avoiding Rafe’s offer.

“I can give you a ride.”

“Will you let me drive?”

Rafe snorted, picking up his sandwich and taking a bite to talk around the food in his mouth, “No fucking way, Maybank.”

On the drive back over to The Cut JJ was silent, leaning his chin on his curled fist and staring out as the trees grew thicker and thicker around them. When they finally pulled up outside JJ's father's place his leg was bouncing, his heel tapping away nervously in the footwell.

Rafe shut off the engine and said, "I'll come in with you."

JJ shook his head. "No, it's better if I go in on my own."

"Dude, it's fine, I'm coming with you. I'll just wait at the door."

JJ looked Rafe up and down then nodded and said, “Ok, but just wait at the door, yeah? Don’t come in, my dad’s… he’s a psycho.”

JJ’s place was a mess, six months ago Rafe would have been cataloguing every depressing detail to use against JJ and the rest of the Pogues, but now he just felt… He felt angry on JJ’s behalf, that he had had to endure this bullshit for his _entire life_.

He stood out on the front porch, which was littered with pieces of engines, empty beer bottles and ashtrays overflowing with cigarette butts, a blue cooler leaking melted ice and a broken bug zapper. It was silent inside for about ten minutes and then there was a sudden explosion of shouting, the sounds of a scuffle, and then JJ came bursting through the screen door, a bag over his shoulder and another in his hand. His father, Luke, came barrelling out after him and tugged the second bag right out of his hand and threw it onto the floor.

“You wanna come in here and start stealing from your old man now?” he shouted, swaying just a little. “You’re a fucking piece of shit thief, boy!”

Rafe was bigger than JJ's father, and as he stepped forward he towered over him. He'd been in enough fights to know he wasn't afraid of this old man, who obviously hadn’t noticed Rafe standing out on the porch. He swung his hands up in shock but Rafe pushed at the front of Luke Maybank’s rank shirt and shoved him hard against the clapboard wall next to the creaking screen door.

"Get your fucking hands off me," Luke spat, struggling with Rafe and trying to swing for him again.

Rafe just shook him, pulling him forward and pushing him back against the wall as hard as he could. 

"Calm the fuck down," Rafe said, grinding the words out slow and dangerous. "I'm taking this stuff here, you understand, this belongs to your boy, so we're taking it."

JJ's eyes were wide, looking from Rafe to his father, his bag forgotten on the floor.

"If you got a problem you can come and find me and we'll work it out," Rafe said, leaning in close as he pulled the screen door open at his side and with all his strength pushed JJ's father through the open door, watching as he stumbled and fell backwards before slamming the screen shut and turning back to JJ. "Grab your shit, we're leaving."

JJ scrambled to grab the bag on the floor and, after a second’s hesitation, flipped open the cooler and grabbed a couple of beers from the pond of melted ice for good measure.

Back in Rafe’s truck JJ sat in a kind of wired silence, his two stolen beers held carefully in his lap.

“You ok?” Rafe asked eventually.

JJ shook his head but smiled slow, looking across at Rafe. “Never thought I’d be happy to see you getting violent with someone.”

Rafe huffed out a laugh. “He’s lucky that’s all he got.”

When they pulled up outside John B's place they found it thankfully deserted, Rafe wasn’t ready for any kind of awkward confrontation with the rest of the Pogues just yet and he was pretty sure that JJ wasn’t either. The place was a mess just like JJ’s place had been, but there was something homely about it, some order to the chaos. Rafe clocked the hot tub, which was sat, just as Sarah had described, out on the sandy grass at the back of the house.

“I was gonna ask how you knew where John B’s place was,” JJ said slyly. “But then I remembered you’ve been here before.”

Rafe knew JJ meant the night Topper and Kelce threw John B off the pier but he furrowed his brow and said, “I don’t think I have.”

JJ rolled his eyes, scoffing as he opened the passenger door and stepped out. “Yeah, right. You don’t remember,” he waved his hand around, “ _propositioning_ me?”

Rafe shook his head and shrugged. “Don’t remember that at all, dude. I remember _you_ turning up at _my_ apartment and propositioning _me_.” Rafe watched him as he grabbed his bags from the backseat of the truck and said, “Are you sure you’re ok to stay here?”

“Yeah, man, it’s cool, John B’s used to me taking advantage of his hospitality,” he smiled then he said, suddenly serious, “Rafe, thanks for… for back there.”

“Any time,” Rafe said as he started the truck’s engine, wanting to get away before Pogues started showing up. “Come see me, yeah?”

JJ cocked a finger gun at him, clicked his teeth and said, “You got it.”

By mid August the heat was almost unbearable at Rafe’s complex, the AC pulled in air from the vents and pumped the stale smell of grey water into Rafe’s apartment. JJ hadn’t reappeared for almost two weeks so Rafe decided to head over to his father’s house a little more often, both to get out of the heat and to avoid his depressingly empty apartment. He had wanted to go looking for JJ but figured maybe he needed space, maybe he needed to get over whatever had happened with his father. Maybe he needed _time_. Whatever the fuck it was, Rafe was determined to wait it out, not to crowd him, not to hound him.

So Rafe would find his way to his father’s house and would approach slow, checking for any sign of his father’s or Rose’s cars. When he was sure they were out he would pull up and park, jumping out quick to use the pool or grab a few bags of ice from the kitchen.

Sometimes Sarah would be there and they would circle carefully around one another, as though they were learning to communicate for the first time. Sarah was different since she had got with the Pogues and things seemed easier than they were before. Rafe even attended August Taco Pool, which was a years old game that consisted of Wheezie and Sarah arranging a platter of tacos on an inflatable and splashing about trying to eat them without anything dropping into the pool. It was _tradition_ , they said when Rafe choked on a mouthful of chlorinated water trying to bite a disintegrating taco shell directly out of the pool.

Afterwards he and Sarah lay on the loungers under the shade of the bougainvillea, which crawled thick and fragrant over a white wooden pergola next to the pool. Rafe closed his eyes and tried to soak in the moment, calm for once.

“How’s JJ?” Sarah asked suddenly, as thought they had already been talking about it.

Rafe cracked an eye open and looked across at Sarah. “What?”

“I was just wondering how JJ was?”

Rafe laughed, trying not to sound nervous. “How the fuck would I know?”

Sarah shrugged. “I thought you guys were hanging out.”

“Why would you think that?”

“I thought I saw you guys,” she said, as though it were nothing. “At that BLT place near The Cut.”

Rafe huffed out a laugh and closed his eyes again. “He sells me weed sometimes, we aren’t hanging out.”

“You know you’re allowed to hang out with people who aren’t Topper and Kelce, right?”

“Wow, thanks, Sarah, I had no idea,” Rafe said sarcastically, trying to ignore how his heart was pounding. He couldn’t even remember the last time he saw Topper and Kelce, maybe Midsummers?

“I’m just saying,” she said. “JJ is a good guy, it’s ok if you wanna expand your social circle.”

Rafe opened his eyes and frowned across at Sarah, who looked back at him, calm and kind. So like their mother. His instinct told him to lash out, to tell her to shut up, to mind her own business, but he found the impulse just wasn’t there, he just didn’t have the energy to be an asshole. It was the heat, he told himself. It was just too hot.

“Ok, thanks, I guess,” Rafe said instead, closing his eyes and settling back against the lounger. “I’ll keep it in mind.”

At that moment Wheezie’s voice came from above them, calling out of her bedroom window, “Dad’s on his way home.”

Rafe groaned, sitting up and casting around for his clothes. Sarah was already up and gathering them, pushing them into his arms. Rafe wound them into a bundle as he stood up, tripping over his trainers as he tried to jam his damp feet into them.

“Hey, Rafe,” Sarah said, suddenly nervous, looking up at Rafe as he righted himself. “This was fun.”

Rafe huffed out a laugh and hung his head as he nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “It was.”

Sarah smiled, then said hurriedly, “Ok, you better get out of here.”

As he drove away he found he wasn’t ready to go back to his empty apartment, so he made up his mind to hit up Topper, to grab a couple of beers, chill out with his friends. On his way over he found his thoughts drifting back to the Chateau, with its ridiculously out of place hot tub, its well-worn hammocks, its rickety pier where Sarah said she would sunbathe while the other Pogues fished. He thought about JJ, his warm smile, his jittery energy, his gentle laugh. He thought about the change in Sarah, how quickly she had grown, how strong she seemed after leaving the Kooks behind. He thought if only he could be strong enough to leave Figure 8 behind, to follow JJ onto The Cut and sleep in hammocks under the stars, haul crabs for beer money, buy a boat, live his life.

He drove on autopilot, arriving at Topper’s with an inexplicable sense of dread in the pit of his stomach, hauling his body up to the glass-fronted entrance of the house to ring the doorbell.

After a long moment Topper opened the door and grinned wide. “Hey, man, you made it!” He reached out and grabbed at Rafe, pulling him in through the open door and into the huge kitchen, out to the garden at the back of the house that overlooked the Sound, where a pool party was in full swing. “I didn’t think you were coming?”

“I…” Rafe didn’t know what to say, he couldn’t even remember hearing about a party.

“It’s August 21st, dude,” Topper said, throwing his arms out. Music boomed from a soundsystem by the pool, and a bar had been set up on the landscaped grass. 

Of course, Rafe smiled awkwardly. Every August 21st Topper threw a pool party, always annoyed that it clashed with Sarah’s “dumb pool shit” back when they were still dating.

“Did you fucking forget?” Topper scoffed and clapped his hand on Rafe’s shoulder.

“I was at Taco Pool,” Rafe said dumbly.

Topper looked scandalised. “Fucking Taco Pool? Are you serious? What’s going on with you, bro?”

Rafe didn’t know what to say so he just nodded at Kelce as he approached, looking buzzed. 

“Rafe, bro!” Kelce pulled him into a one armed hug then held him close. “You selling? We been waiting on you, dude!”

Rafe shook his head. “No, man, I haven’t got anything.”

Kelce pulled away, his face dropping. “What’s going on with you, bro?” he said, echoing Topper. “We haven’t seen you in like a month and then you finally show up and you don’t even have any gear?”

“I’ve been laying off it,” Rafe said, feeling hot and crowded.

Topper made a noise like a game show buzzer. “Total bummer, dude.” Then he turned to Kelce and said, “He was doing _Taco Pool_ with Sarah.”

Kelce laughed. “Are you losing it?” 

Topper laughed too, hitting his shoulder against Rafe’s like they were sharing a joke, saying, “He'd rather hang out eating tacos with that Pogue fucker than partying with us and like fifty of the hottest chicks on Figure 8.”

“Don’t call her that,” Rafe said quietly.

Topper rolled his eyes. “Jesus, are you feeling _sensitive_ , Rafey?”

Rafe moved without thinking, getting a fist in Topper’s polo shirt, pulling him up so that his court shoes scraped on the ground. “Don’t fucking talk about her like that,” he said, arm straining as he held Topper up on his tiptoes.

“Hey, hey, Rafe, calm down, man,” Kelce said, putting a hand on his shoulder to try and separate them. “Rafe, dude, what the fuck?”

He let Topper go, who stumbled back and stared at him dumbfounded.

“I’ll see you guys around, yeah?” Rafe said, looking Topper up and down before turning on his heel and walking straight back out the way he had come.

It was a mistake, he realised in that moment, it was a big mistake to come back here. His skin itched and he felt the old anger coursing through him, the old rage. He thought about the coke still in his kitchen drawer for the first time in a long time, then shook his head. As he got back into his truck and slammed the door he realised that more than anything he needed to find JJ, needed to straighten things out, needed to recalibrate.

He found him at the Clayton’s place, around the back cutting off the damaged fronds of the huge palms that lined their pool. There was no one else around and no cars in the drive, so he assumed JJ must be there alone. JJ was wearing earphones, bopping his head as he worked, shirtless and drenched in sweat, his backwards cap literally _dripping_ with it. Rafe felt like he hadn’t seen him in months, so he stood and watched him for a moment, took in the muscles of his arms as he reached up and pulled at the browning fronds, hacking with what looked like a machete at the point where they were attached to the stem of the palm.

JJ turned to dump the cutting onto a pile that was steadily growing behind him, catching sight of Rafe and jumping, machete gripped tight in his hand.

“Jesus fucking Christ, Rafe,” he shouted, pulling his earphones out. “I’m holding a fucking machete!”

Rafe snorted out a laugh. “That’s why I stayed back here.”

“Damn, dude, you’re always sneaking up on me,” JJ said, dropping the machete on top of the pile of greenery and stalking towards him. “What are you doing here?”

Rafe made a face, what could he say? _I had an argument with my friends and I felt sad and wanted to see you?_ Fuck that shit.

“I was leaving my dad’s and I was just passing, I thought I’d see if you were here,” he said instead. “It’s been a minute,” he added, wanting to make JJ feel awkward for some reason.

“Yeah, man, I’m here every damn day pretty much, they need the work done and I need the money now I’m not at home, so I figured,” he didn’t say what he figured, but he shrugged like that told Rafe all he needed to know. “Are you… Are you ok?”

“Yeah, dude,” Rafe said, looking down at his own feet and struggling with what he wanted to say. He felt the adrenaline still in him from his run in with Topper, felt the _itch_ to put someone’s face out of line. But he ignored it, pushed it down and said instead, “How come you haven’t been around?”

JJ looked past Rafe awkwardly and Rafe could tell he was clamming up, could see the monster lurking there in the back of his eyes.

“JJ...” he started.

JJ held up his hands and then said in a rush, “Listen, Rafe, I’m really fucking sorry. I was avoiding you, like, I felt bad about everything, y’know? Like, you’d had to fucking _chaperone_ me to my dad’s place and then had to see all of that. I was fucking embarrassed, alright? I know we’re not,” he stumbled then, tripping over his words. “I dunno if we’re friends or what, but I feel really fucking bad about it all and I figured maybe you’d wanna just go back to being a Kook cus, well, cus I’m a waster and my dad’s a psycho and we live in this like, shack and...”

“JJ,” Rafe said sternly. “Are you fucking serious? You've been avoiding me this whole time?”

“Well, yeah,” JJ said, rolling his shoulders.

“I literally told you to come see me when I left you at John B’s.”

“I thought you were just being nice.”

Rafe almost laughed. “When the fuck do you see me being nice?”

“All the time, dude,” JJ said as though it were obvious.

Rafe opened his mouth, a comeback dying on his tongue, then he clamped it shut, unsure of what to say. Eventually he said, “You don’t think I’m a Kook anymore?”

JJ laughed then, honest and open, and wiped his forearm over his sweating face. “You practically live on The Cut, dude. You eat _corned beef_ sandwiches. You literally spend your Friday nights drinking beer on a roof staring at an empty parking lot,” JJ said all this like it was common knowledge, like Rafe should have known all along. “With _me_ ,” he added. “I ain’t _never_ seen no Kook doing any one of those things.”

Rafe didn’t know what to respond to that, so he stayed quiet. JJ looked up at the Clayton’s huge house and quickly closed the distance between them, reaching for Rafe and pulling him forward.

“You ain’t no Pogue,” he said. “But you ain’t no Kook either.”

JJ leaned up to kiss him, brief and apologetic, before stepping back and pushing him away. “I’m sorry, dude,” he said with a smile.

“Don’t fucking avoid me again,” Rafe said, pushing him back. “Asshole.”

JJ looked genuinely sorry for a moment and then he grinned, slow and almost sly. “I’ll make it up to you.”

Rafe rolled his eyes.

“I’ll be the penniless pool boy and you can be the wealthy widow,” he said in an accent that sounded something like a _southern fucking belle_. “If you give me an extra twenty I’ll go down on you next to the pool, why I sure do need the money.”

“You’re a dumbass,” Rafe said, ignoring the sixteen year old version of himself in the back of his head that was practically _screaming_ for him to play along. “Dunno why it’ll cost an extra twenty, you’ve always done it for free before.”

“Shut the fuck up, Rafe,” JJ said with a laugh. “Don’t act like you don’t want it, I know all about you now, dude.”


	7. Chapter 7

The end of August passed in a haze of oppressive heat; there were fires on the mainland and the island sanctioned controlled burns to create fire breaks for the safety of the locals. JJ got a second job on Figure 8 and would drop by Rafe’s afterwards, filthy and sweating from the heat of the day. Rafe would get him a beer and order him into the shower, pretending like he was grossed out but really just pleased he had shown up. Rafe’s playacting grew gentler and gentler, until he found himself kissing JJ’s cheek when they said goodbye, or ruffling his hair when they were sat side-by-side on the couch watching trash. One time JJ fell asleep while they watched a movie and had slumped against Rafe, who tentatively pulled his arm free and wrapped it around JJ’s shoulders, tugging him closer so that JJ was tucked sleepily into his side. Rafe remembered his heart beating fast as he looked down at the crown of JJ’s head against his chest, but calmed himself by matching JJ’s slow, steady breaths, holding him til he too fell asleep.

The heat didn't let up until mid September, when the days were finally bearable and the evenings started to get cooler. On those evenings Rafe and JJ would sit up on the roof of Rafe’s apartment complex and drink into the night, or they would play ball in the parking lot, or go out and smoke on the dark dunes. Sometimes JJ would bring fishing gear and they would head out to the public pier at Avalon Bench and try to catch drum or mackerel or early trout.

One evening towards the end of September they stood on the pier singing a Bob Marley song, each taking a line and having to take a drink if they forgot the words. On his third beer JJ huffed and sat down on top of the cooler they had carried from Rafe’s truck, fishing rod in hand.

“I heard from Sarah all your little Pogues are heading to the Halloween party at the country club this year,” Rafe said, looking down at JJ. “How have they figured that?”

"Yeah, so. Your sister is taking John B as her guest, Kiara is taking Pope as hers," JJ said like it was obvious before continuing, "and they got a plan to sneak me in."

“Why don’t you just go as my guest?” Rafe said. “Just don’t tell anyone, pretend you snuck in, if you want.”

JJ grinned. “Are you inviting me to the ball, Rafe? Will I finally be accepted into polite society?”

Rafe scoffed, “Literally never.” Then he said, “But I can get you in if you wanna go.”

JJ reeled in his line a little, getting his finger in between the spool and the line as he did so. Rafe knew JJ didn’t have a bite, he was just fiddling about because he felt awkward. It felt like JJ wanted to _broach_ something, like he had been sitting on some unbearable query all evening.

“It’s no big deal,” Rafe said eventually. “It’s not like I’d be taking anyone else, that shit doesn’t bother me anymore.”

JJ glanced up at him, chewing at the inside of his lip, his eyes damn well Disney-bright in the moonlight. “Are we like…” JJ trailed off, obviously hoping Rafe would finish the sentence for him.

“Fishing?”

JJ made a frustrated noise. “Dude. What’s going on with us? Are we… are we _together_?”

Rafe looked away, down at the pier and then out to where his own line disappeared under the dark water, where the colourful bobber sat motionless on the still surface. They still hadn’t talked about it, although it was always floating around in the back of Rafe’s mind, especially after Sarah had asked him about it that day in August by the pool. Rafe found he wanted to be around JJ almost all the time, that he felt calmer, more at ease when JJ was near him. _Happier_. But being the first one to admit that was way too fucking scary so instead he said, “Do you wanna be?”

“Do _you_?”

“I asked you first.”

JJ made a noise again then said, “Well. Yeah, I guess. I do.”

Rafe nodded. “Me too,” he said and couldn’t help but smile. He hoped it was hidden by the cover of darkness, but the moon was full and white above them and JJ was looking up at him with that _look_. That open, honest look.

“So if I go to the Halloween party with you I’ll officially be your date,” JJ said, looking back out to the water.

“You can borrow a dress from Sarah,” Rafe said, trying to make out like it was no big deal.

“Something pretty to bring out my eyes,” JJ said with a grin.

“You’re really moving up in the world, poolboy,” Rafe said.

“Maybe you’ll make an honest man of me yet.”

“Nah,” Rafe said. “Think of the scandal.”

“Your dad would be devastated,” JJ said. “I’ll get banned from the apartment.”

“Pfft, no one’s fucking banning you from the apartment,” Rafe said, and then continued without thinking, “We can get our own apartment.”

JJ stared, brain ticking over. “Our own…”

Rafe shrugged, not wanting to give JJ the time to process what he had just said. “Let’s get out of here,” he said, changing the subject as quickly as possible. “I haven’t got a bite all evening.”

“You alright to drive?” JJ said, hauling himself up as he began to reel in his line.

Rafe shook his head. “Nah, I don’t wanna risk it, my dad’ll lose his shit if I get another DUI.”

“Alrighty,” JJ said with a smile. “Wanna take a walk?”

They carefully bundled up their fishing rods and locked it securely inside the truck, which was parked in the gravel at the side of the road. Despite the cool evening, Rafe was sweating and felt his t-shirt sticking to his back between his shoulder blades, so they decided to carry the half-full cooler back with them, swapping it between them whenever they got tired.

They walked along the quiet roadway until they could get onto the beach, then they wandered slowly through the dunes under the moonlight, drinking their warm beers and talking low.

“Remember when you followed me out here on the New Year’s Eve Eve party?” JJ said as they walked. “I thought you were gonna kick the shit out of me, man.”

“I don’t know what I was gonna do, I was wasted.” The Angel Oaks here were the same twisted kind they had all over The Cut and the memory was suddenly vivid in Rafe’s mind, trudging up the bank to where JJ stood pissing into the sand.

“You said you wanted to get high with me,” JJ laughed a little, trying to be quiet.

“I think I just wanted to be near you all the time,” Rafe said honestly. There was something comforting about saying those types of things in the dark, a blanket that quieted the mind, that shielded him from embarrassment. “But I didn’t know why.”

“You were so weird back then,” JJ said gently, not unkindly at all.

“You don’t think I’m weird now?”

JJ considered this then said, “Well, I guess you’re still weird, but now I understand why.”

“I thought you were this angry, violent guy,” Rafe said, realising that he had been projecting his own fucked up shit onto JJ all those years. “I thought you liked the fighting as much as I did.”

“Sometimes I did,” JJ said quietly. “It felt good to like… just hit something sometimes.”

Rafe nodded. He thought back to the first few times after they started getting together, how often he had tasted his own blood in the scuffles with JJ, how familiar it became to have JJ’s hands on him. JJ was fucking strong, Rafe knew that, it was something he learned about him that he never really realised before. He wondered for a moment what it would have been like if they had been the other way around, if it was JJ forcing Rafe onto his knees, standing over him telling him to open up, _Open up, Rafe_ \- 

“You alright?” JJ asked, slipping down the side of one of the dunes and spilling his beer over the back of his hand.

“Yep,” Rafe said quick, shaking his head. “I’m just thinking.”

“What about?”

“How far we have to walk.”

JJ gave him a look that said he didn’t quite believe him, but he didn’t push it. Instead he just raised his beer and clunked the can against the one that Rafe held in his own hand. “We’ll get there,” he said.

Back at the apartment Rafe let JJ shower, taking his clothes off and slumping facedown on the bed as he listened to the water running in the bathroom. He let his mind wander back to the dunes, imagining he had been honest and told JJ what he had really been thinking about, _I’ve been thinking about you fucking me_.

He’d been thinking about it for a while, if he was honest with himself, but he didn’t want to ask for it, didn’t want to admit that he wanted it. He realised he was scared, that he had spent so many years being _strong_ that he was too scared to be weak. But no, he thought to himself, that wasn’t weakness. When JJ turned up at his apartment that first time he hadn’t been weak, he hadn’t been scared; JJ was a brave motherfucker for knowing what he wanted and for taking it, unapologetically, from someone who could have decided to beat the crap out of him for it.

And Rafe? Rafe could never. So instead he just lay on the bed, hoping JJ might get the hint.

Rafe heard the water shut off, heard JJ singing that same Bob Marley song, forgetting the same words he had forgotten out on the pier. He heard the pad of his feet down the short corridor to the bedroom, and the creak of springs as he clambered up onto the bed.

“Tired?” JJ said.

Rafe just grunted and dug his face into the bedsheets, his eyes shut tight. He was hard, and he wondered if JJ could tell somehow. He could feel his skin buzzing, and he felt like the question was on the tip of his tongue.

_Why don’t you just ask?_

JJ sat on the bed in silence, Rafe wasn’t sure if he was looking at him but he found himself holding his breath, trying to communicate silently what he wanted.

There was a shuffle of bedclothes and Rafe felt a hand on his side. He turned his face away as his cock twitched under him. JJ could tell, he was sure of it, there was a sudden tension in the silence between them that he ached to fill, but he just couldn’t bring himself to do so. JJ squeezed the muscle at his hip and when he finally shifted to settle his naked hips over Rafe’s ass Rafe let out a shaky breath. JJ said nothing, just put his hands on the muscle of Rafe’s lower back and pushed the heels of his palms upwards, as though he were trying to knead out some of the tension trapped there. He dragged his fingers back down and when he pushed his hands back up towards Rafe’s shoulders he rocked his hips against Rafe’s briefs.

Rafe groaned, a sleepy thing, and stretched out a little longer under JJ, as though this was just a drowsy nothing, just a dream. He could feel that JJ was getting hard, gently rutting against him, carefully guessing what it was that Rafe wanted, navigating his way through the silence.

_Rafe_ knew what he wanted, even if he couldn’t ask for it, so on an inhale he reached down and pushed at the elastic of his own briefs, tugging at them til they were below his ass cheeks. JJ huffed above him, pushing his cock against Rafe’s now bare ass. The thrill of feeling JJ where he had never felt him before, this unspoken thing, had Rafe’s heart pounding. He kept his eyes shut tight and listened to JJ’s breathing, and when Rafe reached back and grabbed a handful of ass, pulling gently so that JJ’s cock could finally slip between his ass cheeks, JJ swore quietly under his breath. The sound made him feel desperate and he felt wet, felt ready for him somehow.

_God_ , Rafe wanted JJ to do it, he wanted to get up on his hands and knees and let JJ fuck him, but he still couldn’t ask for it, so he just lay on the bed and let JJ rub up against him. He felt JJ’s lips on the back of his neck, then he felt his teeth. JJ put his arms either side of Rafe’s head and started fucking up against him, pushing Rafe’s own hard cock against the bed sheets. When Rafe finally pushed his hips up he felt the head of JJ’s cock slip past his hole and knew JJ felt it too, as he let out a long, low groan, then huffed out, “Fuck, Rafe, I wanna…” 

“What?” Rafe said, pushing his hips up further and getting a hand on himself, pulling as JJ fucked up against him. “What do you want?”

JJ groaned again, and said, “I’m gonna come.”

“Do it,” Rafe said, suddenly so close himself. “Do it.”

The feeling of JJ coming above him, _on him_ , had Rafe tumbling over the edge right after him, grinding out some pained noise and biting a wet mess into the bedsheets. He kept his hand on his hot cock underneath him and didn’t move for a moment afterwards, instead trying to soak in the feeling of JJ on top of him, his body pinning him.

“Fuck,” JJ said eventually, breathing heavy. He sat back on Rafe’s legs, obviously looking at what he had done, and said, “I made a mess.”

Rafe snorted, shifting so that JJ rolled off of him. “Gonna have to shower again.”

“That was ok, right?” JJ asked as he watched him get up from the bed. “I mean, you were ok with that.”

Rafe looked away and nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “That was. Yeah.”

Thankfully JJ didn’t need any further explanation, he just closed his eyes and let himself fall back into the sheets, blissed out and beautiful. Rafe looked at him for a moment, his gold-tan skin against the white sheets, his damp hair going crazy as it dried. There wasn’t a bruise on him, Rafe realised, not a-one. No fresh cuts split open by their bodies moving together, no yellow skin, no purpling contusions. _Healing, healing, healed,_ Rafe thought, checking JJ over one last time before heading to the shower. _Every day it was a little better, every day it was a little easier._

The next morning Rafe called the country club and told them he would be bringing a plus one to the Halloween party. _Note this down, the name is JJ Maybank_ , he had said. _Yeah, of course I will be his sponsor, whatever you need_.

He didn’t care about the sponsorship, it didn’t mean anything. As he hung up the phone he knew that it would be the last time that he would visit the country club. He knew as sure as anything that those days were behind him, that the Kook life was over for him. It was like JJ had said, he wasn’t a Pogue but he definitely wasn’t a Kook, not anymore. He was just something in between, something in flux, something that was just healing, healing, healing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please accept my apologies for the delay! I love you all! <3

**Author's Note:**

> I just want these boys to be happy, alright???? Is that too much to ask????


End file.
